Red deer

RED DEER.

WORKS BY RICHARD JEFFERIES.

FIELD AND HEDGEROW : Last Essays.
With Portrait. Crown 8vo, 3^. 6J.

THE STORY OF MY HEART: My

Autobiography. With Portrait and New Preface
by C. J, LONGMAN. Crown 8vo, y. 6d.

RED DEER. With 17 Illustrations by J.
CHARLTON and H. TUNALY. Crown 8vo, y. f>d.

THE TOILERS OF THE FIELD. With
a Portrait from the Bust in Salisbury Cathedral.
Crown 8vo, y. 6d.

WOOD MAGIC : A Fable. With Frontis-
piece and Vignette by E. V. B. Crown 8vo,

THOUGHTS FROM THE WRITINGS
OF RICHARD JEF1-ERIKS. Selected by H. S.
HOOLE WAYLEN. i6mo, y. net.

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY.

BED DEER

RICHARD JEFFERIES

AUTHOR OF "THE GAMEKEEPER AT HOME," "FIELD AND HEDGEROW,
"WOOD MAGIC," "THE STORY OF MY HEART," ETC.

WITH SEVENTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. CHARLTON
AND H. TUNALY

FIFTH IMPRESSION

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

NEW YORK AND BOMBAY

1903

All rights reserved

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

First Edition, 1884.

Second Edition (Silver Library), 1892.

Reprinted 1894, 1900, and igoj.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

I. RED DEER LAND I

II. WILD EXMOOR 26

III. DEER IN SUMMER ..... 49

IV. ANTLER AND FERN . , a . .76

V. WAYS OF DEER IOI

VI. TRACKING DEER BY SLOT . . . .123

VII. THE HUNTED STAG 147

VIII. HIND- HUNTING . . . . . .176

IX. A MANOR HOUSE IN DEER LAND . . . 2OO

X. GAME NOTES AND FOLK-LORE . . . 225

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

The Frontispiece is by Mr. HENRY TUNALY, and the othet
Illustrations are by Mr. JOHN CHARLTON.

PAGE

RED DEER LAND Frontispiece

ENTERING ORCHARDS 3

WILD EXMOOR 26

"ON THE OPPOSITE SLOPE ARE FIVE HINDS LYING

DOWN" 35

"THE WHOLE EIGHT PAUSED IN A GROUP AND WATCHED

ME" 39

CLOUTSHAM FORD -57

"THE DEER RUSH TO THE SWIFT BROOK" ... 65

HORNER MILL 71

CLOUTSHAM FARM yj

"PROUD AS A SPANISH NOBLE" 97

PORLOCK WEIR IIO

"TUFTERS" I4I

"THE HUNTED STAG STANDS AT BAY IN THE RIVER" 157
"A HIND WHEN STARTED OFTEN HAS A CALF RUN-
NING BESIDE HER" ,85

"LEAPS AT THE HEDGE, IS THROUGH AND SAFE" . 217
" THE DOG-FOX BARKS AT NIGHT " . . . . .235

"THIS BE ROUGH RIDING" 247

RED DEER,
i.

RED DEER LAND.

THE wild red deer in the West of England
have so largely increased in numbers recently
as to occupy a very different and far more
important position in the fauna of the
country than used to be the case. Almost
every one has heard as a kind of tradition
that the red deer which used to roam in the
forests all over England still remained wild
in a corner of Somerset. The circumstance
is often alluded to in books and conversa-
tion as an interesting story, not much more
real than the adventures of Leather-stocking

RED DEER.

among the Red Indians and deer of the
backwoods. Or, if accepted as a fact, it is
looked at in the same light as the preserva-
tion of white wild cattle in certain parks,
wild but protected by enclosure. Those, of
course, who have hunted in Somerset are
well acquainted with the truth, but to the
majority of people the red deer of Exmoor
are like the golden eagles shot from time
to time as they pass over southern woods,
and preserved as valuable curiosities. Al-
though so many tourists visit Somerset and
Devon, and go through the red deer country,
their objects are generally scenery or trout-
fishing, and they are there at a season when
the deer are peculiarly shy and seldom seen.
Nor, if seen, could a casual passer-by under-
stand the full meaning of their appearance.
They are associated with the deer kept in
parks, and considered to be wild only in a
limited sense.

ENTERING ORCHARDS.— Page 5.

RED DEER LAND.

In reality the red deer are wild in the
fullest sense of the term, as wild and unre-
strained in their movements as the deer of
the backwoods of America. If found in one
spot to-day, they may be miles distant on
the morrow. They roam over hill and moor,
through valley and plain, wood, meadow,
and cultivated field, entering orchards, gar-
dens, and allotments from time to time
during the night, exactly as wild animals
do about the settlements of colonists. They
are never supplied with food even in the
severest winters, but find their "meat" where
they can, like the hares. The hunt is no
paper chase — no artificial sport, like that of
deer turned out from a cart — the hunt is a
real chase of the most arduous character,
and for the purpose of killing the stag or
hind, which is afterwards eaten as venison.
The pursuit is attended with great fatigue
and considerable danger, that of the hind,

RED DEER.

which is followed in winter, especially re-
quiring hardihood and endurance. In dis-
tant countries wild animals are hunted in
order to diminish their numbers and the
damage they do to the crops of settlers ; and
in the same manner of recent seasons the
chase of the red deer has been directed to
the reduction of the herds. The object, it
must be borne in mind, is the actual killing
of the wild animal, not merely the riding
after it. There is in every respect an exact
parallel between the hunt in the days of
Chevy Chase and the hunt of the present
time.

These deer have been hitherto spoken of
as the red deer of Exmoor, but they have
now extended so widely, roaming over great
tracts of two counties, that this limited term
is no longer applicable. They are now the
red deer of the West of England. But
Exmoor was ^their retreat during the long,

RED DEER LAND.

long passage of time down from mediaeval
days to our own, and it was from thence
that they spread abroad under favourable
conditions. It remains the centre of Red
Deer Land, and without a clear idea of
this remarkable district no one can com-
prehend how it is that the deer are so
really wild.

The moors of the Exe river are not flat
stretches of marshland, but hills of great
height covered with heather. The term
mountains may almost be applied to them
— numbers of the ridges are twice the height
of Beachy Head or the Dyke at Brighton —
Dunkery Beacon is three times as high. But
the conformation of the country is such that
on entering it the elevations do not seem
very unusual, for as it is all high and raised
the eye has nothing with which to contrast
it. When on the moor it appears an im-
mense table-land, intersected by deep narrow

RED DEER.

valleys, called coombes, at the bottom of
which a stream always flows. At some
distance apart are ranges of hills rising
gradually and with gentle slopes above the
general level of the moor. The curves ap-
pear so moderate and the ascent so easy
that there can be no difficulty in walking or
riding over them. Dunkery itself is nothing
more than an undulation, scarcely to be
separated at some points of view from the
common line of the ridge. These hills seem
only a mile or two away and within half-
an-hour's walk.

But on going towards them, the table-land
suddenly sinks in a deep coombe, when it
is apparent that the moor which looked sc
level is really the top of a hill. This
coombe has to be descended, and ascended,
and the sides are high and steep. Presently
another coombe intervenes, and after five
miles' walking very little progress has been

RED DEER LAND.

made. At last the slope of the hill is
reached, and has now expanded into a
mountainous ascent, not to be overcome
without much labour and more time. The
country is, in fact, very deceptive, much
wider, and much more difficult than it looks.
The expanse confuses the eye, and will not
allow it to judge distances. From the spot
where you stand to the range yonder is per-
haps five -and -twenty miles. On Haddon
Hill the glance passes from Dunkery, which
overlooks the Severn Sea, to Sidmouth Gap
by St. George's Channel, so that the eye
sees across the entire breadth of England
there.

The consequence of these great distances
is that all minor distances are shrunken,
and five miles looks nothing. The illusion
is assisted by the smooth outline of the
moors, without a fence for miles together,
and without a visible tree, for the covers

RED DEER.

are in the coombes, and there are few or no
copses on the hills, as in the South Downs.
Nothing whatever breaks up the surface
and measures the view. Heather covers the
largest part of the ground, which is never
ploughed or sown, and where there are no
flower-grown meads. One vast breadth of
open, wild, and treeless country reaches in
every direction, and it is at once obvious
why the deer have remained at large since
the most ancient times, for the land is in
the same condition as it was centuries ago.
The plough has not touched it, and civilisa-
tion has not come near.

This day may be in the reign of Charles
the First or Queen Elizabeth, or even in the
Plantagenet times, for aught the appearance
of the land says to the contrary. The cross-
bow, the cloth-yard arrow, or the clumsy
matchlock may still be in use — armour may
be worn — and manuscripts be as yet un-

RED DEER LAND.

supplanted by printed books. There is no
printing-press here — the moor has known no
change ; it is the home of the wild red deer,
their home since William the Conqueror
landed, and long before then — since Roman
arms and Roman money ruled the island
beyond the ocean.

Why has Exmoor remained in this con-
dition, uncultivated for so many centuries ?
why does it still defy agriculture and im-
provement? Three causes present them-
selves— the nature of the soil, the cost of
labour, and the character of the climate.
A long winter of eight months, with con-
tinuous rains and heavy fogs, is succeeded by
a hot, short summer. Though the summer
is very hot there are occasional intervals of
cold. Sometimes when vapour is sweeping
over from the Severn Sea it is accompanied
by a wind which chills to the marrow. In
1882 there was quite a crust of frost on the

RED DEER.

morning of June 21. When the sun shines
the fierce rays pour down on the heather
and dry it till it is hard and wiry, so hard
as to wear out the stoutest boots quickly.
Innumerable bees gather to the heather-
bells; it is a question where they all come
from ; they must travel long distances to
the feast of honey. The whortleberries
ripen, and women and children go out to
pick them. It is their harvest of the year ;
tons and tons — whole truck-loads — are sent
away by railroad. Rain and fog alternate
for most of the winter, together with in-
tense cold. Against this bitter cold large
quantities of turf are laid in, and the fires
on the hearths banked up in glowing piles.

The thickness of the fogs often prevents
the sight from penetrating more than a few
yards, and so confuses the wayfarer that the
residents much prefer the darkness of night
to the vapours of noonday. They can find

RED DEER LAND. 13

their path by night, but the thick mist
sometimes defies even the shepherds. It
hangs for days ; Dunkery Beacon is hidden
in it when, at the same time, the vale be-
neath is clear and lit by the sun. It is
observed that when Dunkery Beacon is thus
completely covered the Selworthy range of
hills just opposite are frequently free of
fog. The staghounds are accordingly taken
across to Selworthy at such times. To
hunt on the moors about Dunkery is im-
possible— the hounds would be lost to view
in a moment in the vapour. Winds sweep
over the exposed heights sometimes with
such violence that a man can hardly retain
his seat in the saddle. Such inclemency
seems due to the elevation of the land, the
nearness of the Western sea, and the nature
of the soil, which retains water.

Good crops are obtained in the vales,
though everything is late in spring, so that

I4 RED DEER.

it is a matter of surprise so much can be
grown in so short a time. Cost of labour
must be understood to include cost of lime
and haulage, as without lime the soil can-
not be improved. This soil consists of a
black friable peat, in some places deep, in
others shallow. Under a hot sun it be-
comes dry, but during the winter, and in-
deed for the greater part of the year, it
is soft and watery. Bogs are numerous,
and springy places which are almost bogs.
Labour must first be expended in clearing
the surface of heather, whortleberries, and
rough grass. Lime must then be carried
up, and the cost of haulage equals the price
of the material.

When ploughed and laid down to grass,
unless broken up from time to time, the
ground will revert and yield nothing but
rushes. Acres upon acres may be seen
covered with rushes where land has been

RED DEER LAND.

reclaimed, and has reverted to waste. Yet
it would seem that the black peaty earth
contains the elements of fertility, and per-
sons are continually tempted to lay out
their money in an effort to do something
with it. Here is, in fact, a great agricultural
problem

An immense experiment was made some
years ago by the owner of a large part of
the moors to improve his seventy thousand
acres. He caused the surface to be broken
up, and lime to be hauled. Walls were
built to form enclosures, and when the deer
climbed the walls wire was put along, in
which wire many deer got hung by their
legs, and had to be killed — being injured.
A tramway was laid down. Instead of
the horned mountain sheep, or " Porlocks,"
Cheviots were introduced. Numerous farm-
houses were erected in a substantial manner,
and fir copses planted to shelter the inmates

16 RED DEER.

and the stock in the yards from the tre-
mendous gales. The land was let to Scotch
farmers, who came down from the North
to a country almost resembling their own.
A mansion like a castle was built in the
midst of the wilderness. All these measures
were such as would naturally suggest them-
selves, but only partially succeeded.

The farmhouses are now occupied by
Scotch shepherds ; if you knock at the
door a Scotch face appears, and you are
offered a glass of milk, to which you are
"varra" welcome. The boundless heather,
the deep glens, and the red deer correspond
to the Gaelic accent. The tramway is gone,
and the track has disappeared for great part
of its length under thick heather. Over
the walls the deer climb easily, and the
unfinished castle is moss-grown. All that
remains is the improvement effected in some
places by the mixture of lime and by the

RED DEER LAND. 17

efforts of the Northern farmers, some irri-
gated meadows in the glens, and the farm-
houses at long intervals. So far as the
general vista — so far as the red deer and
the black game — are concerned, Exmoor has
not altered one iota. The vast moors have
simply swallowed up the efforts of man to
conquer them. The details of this experi-
ment explain why Exmoor remains mediaeval.
It resists the perpetual nibbling which goes
on around the inhabited places.

The villages and towns are far apart, the
towns are only so called as having markets,
and are no larger than the villages in corn
counties. These Exmoor villages are usually
situated at the bottom of deep coombes,
those coombes in which flow the largest
streams, as the Barle and Exe. For in-
stance, Exford, which is the very centre of
Red Deer Land, and has been chosen for
the kennels of the staghounds, is on the

1 8 RED DEER.

banks of the Exe in a deep hollow. It
is absolutely isolated. There is a well-
conducted hotel, the White Horse, where
huntsmen and trout-fishers find accommo-
dation, but it is ten miles to the nearest
station, and there is no telegraph. The
hamlet street is level for a little distance,
but with this exception no one can move
from his doorstep without going uphill,
unless it be to wade along the river. Four
principal roads and some lanes leave the
place, and by each of them there is an
ascent of two miles' length. Two miles up-
hill must be got over before rider or walker
reaches the summit, and then he is only
among the hills and has not surmounted
them. Some considerable part of the first
two miles on the slopes above the Exe is
cultivated. It is good land and yields well
though late, and has all been enclosed from
the moor.

RED DEER LAND. 19

One owner encloses a piece one year,
another the next ; and thus Exmoor is
nibbled at. The circle slowly spreads, but
so slowly as to make no apparent impres-
sion ; some fields, too, have fallen back
to rushes. When the first slope above
the Exe has been climbed, when the way-
farer has got out of the deep valley, he
comes at once to the moor, to heather
and whortleberry. There are sheep and
bullocks in the fields, but the whistle of
the curlew — true sign of the wilderness —
is heard among them. From the inhabited
places Exmoor is nibbled at, but is not
affected, any more than the drainage of fens
straitens the sea.

The boundless heather, which looks dark
in spring and early summer, at first sight
seems the only growth of the endless
moors. Among it, on closer examination,
will be found the light-green whortleberry

RED DEER.

plants filling the spaces between, and in
many districts there is a quantity of coarse
grass. Every spring portions of the grass
and heather are fired, and the flames travel
with extraordinary rapidity, so that a mile
seems traversed and the surface consumed
almost immediately the match is applied.
By waiting till the direction of the wind
is suitable, the flames burn over the tract
which has been selected, and are in a
measure guided so as to avoid the districts
which it is not desirable to destroy. Great
fires like this again remind one of the
prairies of America. After the fire the
charred stems of furze alone remain, and
gradually whiten and turn grey, like ribs
of dead animals, in the winter. Among
these crooked ribs the light-green whortle-
berries and coarse grasses grow till they
overtop the dry sticks. Next, the heather
rises, and after a time the place resumes its

RED DEER LAND. It

former aspect. Meanwhile, the new growth
of grass has afforded pasture to the sheep
and ponies, and to the deer.

Here and there small tufts of cotton on
stalks of grass appear waving in the breeze,
white dots above the dark heath. This
cotton-grass shows a boggy soil, and warns
the rider not to pass there lest his horse
sinks to the knee. Even in the hottest
summer months many places on the moors
— which, it must be remembered, are hill-
tops— retain water, and will let the unwary-
sink. In winter these places are multiplied
tenfold, and it then needs a practised eye
to find a firm path between them. The turf
is much cut away for use as fuel ; it is
stacked, roots outwards, in heaps like hay-
cocks. This fuel has this advantage, that
the ashes have an agricultural value for
drilling in with turnips. But the holes
where it is removed become full of water,

RED DEER.

which stays all the summer ; they are, in
fact, so many bogs, which horsemen should
carefully avoid. Wild ducks are fond of
these shallow ponds, for such they are —
ponds thickly covered by green aquatic
growths. On the higher slopes, where the
heather has not been burned, it rises high,
thick, and difficult to force a way through,
so that the wayfarer must follow the paths
made by the deer. Over these moors sheep,
some bullocks, and ponies almost as wild
as the deer, wander freely. Such is the
North Forest, the centre of Red Deer
Land — the home from which the red
deer spread abroad. Though called the
North Forest, it is bare of trees (except
in the coombes) ; it is an open expanse of
heather.

But the deer are no longer limited to the
moors — they roam over a region of which
Exmoor forms only a corner. With a pencil

RED DEER LAND. 23

draw a line on the map from Bridgewater
to near Ilfracombe, from Ilfracombe down
to Exeter, and again from Exeter up to
Bridgewater, enclosing a triangle, each side
of which on the map would be about fifty
miles, but to ride twenty more, on account
of the irregular ground. It is not to
be supposed that every acre of this re-
gion is visited by the deer, but either
while wandering at their own will, or
when running before the hounds, it is
crossed and recrossed, and marked by
their " slot," or footprints. You could not
put your finger on any particular spot
and say the herd is here, because their
motions are so uncertain ; one year they
stay in one district, and the next go on to
another.

They have been killed at the very gate
of Exeter city, and recently Tiverton has
become a pivot of the hunt. This country

RED DEER.

contains a large part of Somerset and
Devon, Exmoor, and part of Dartmoor, the
Dunkery hills, and the steep Quantocks,
besides numerous minor ranges. The moors
of the Exe, the original home of the deer,
are but a corner. There are vast stretches
of fertile land in the valleys and plains,
cultivated to the highest degree, innumer-
able meadows, each with its thick hedges
and trees, so that with the copses and
covers they resemble woodlands. The tri-
angle has within it not only moors and
hills, but good farming land, a city, and
many large towns. The paths of the deer
wind round about the rich and enclosed
districts, but if chased they frequently go
straight across them.

So wide a space may more aptly be
called a country than a district, and it is
strictly correct to say that the red deer are
not now local. They are the red deer of

RED DEER LAND. 25

the West of England, as wild and free as
in the days of Otterburn, when —

" The dryvars thorowe the woodes went

For to reas the dear ;
Bomen bickarte uppone the bent
With ther browd aras cleare.''

RED DEER.

n.

PF/LZ) EXMOOR.

THE long ascent, two miles of uphill road,
to the level of the moors, passes through
enclosed ground, where the deep valley
shelters the place from the winds of winter.
Thick hedges of beech run on either side
of the road in full June leaf, shutting out
all view and preventing the air from moderat-
ing the heat. There is no current between

WILD BXMOOR. 27

these hedges, which are not far apart, as
the road is narrow, and the sense of heat
is further increased by the slightly red tint
of the dust. The hedges are ten feet high,
and as much through, and beech grows
close with well-leafed sprays, so that al-
though the ascent is continuous, increasing
elevation does not bring coolness. This
impenetrability is of advantage to the cattle,
sheltering them from storms and breaking
the force of the tremendous gales which
blow over Red Deer Land.

All the hedges beside the roads and about
the fields are beech, for hawthorn will not
grow to any height; the soil or the climate
does not suit it, and it always remains thin
and stunted. Beech springs up quickly and
makes a very beautiful hedge to look at,
especially in spring, when the leaf is in its
first fresh green. These hedges grow above
walls of loose stone, earth is banked against

28 RED DEER.

the wall, and the beech flourishes upon it.
Long grass and moss droop over the stones
of the walls like arras, and are hollow be-
neath ; in these hollow spaces humble bees
have their nests. Ferns are almost as thick
as the grass, and sometimes where the walls
are exposed and without the arras of moss,
hart's- tongue springs from every crevice.
Foxgloves flower by the gateways, and from
every gateway there is a pleasant view of
the green valleys beneath, and of the dark
moors above.

At a distance the enclosed fields seem
surrounded with hedges, not merely cropped,
but smoothed and polished, so rounded and
regular do they appear. It is the natural
tendency of beech to grow to a regular
level, so that looking down upon it it ap-
pears cropped. I suppose the square shape
of most of the fields is caused by the walls ;
walls are more easily built in straight lines

WILD EXMOOR.

than in curves. You see a spur of green
hill — always much lower than the moors —
surrounded at the summit by a square hedge
(on a wall) like a square camp or forti-
fication. This greater square is divided
within into lesser squares. Without, fields,
more or less square, descend the slope to
the bottom of the valley, and each hedge,
as just observed, is smooth, round, and of
a polished green.

The road has the solid rock for founda-
tion ; the rock sometimes comes to the sur-
face, so that there is no dust or crumbled
stone, and wheels run on the original hard
ground. Approaching the summit the fields
inside the beech hedge lose the green of
those lower down, the grass is not so long
and fresh, and is strewn with rushes. Pre-
sently there is heather instead of sward, and
the moor is on either hand. The road goes
on over the hill, always between beech

RED DEER.

hedges; but I left it here, and walked out
among the cotton-grass of the moor.

June had come in hot and dry, so that
the dark, peaty earth was firm, and com-
paratively easy to walk on. Even now there
were places where water stood, and I crossed
by stepping on thick tufts of matted grass,
dark water spirting aside under the pressure.
Where the turf had been cut away there
were ponds which it was necessary to go
round. Pale, short grass, the blades far
apart, and not close like the luxuriant growth
of a meadow, interspersed, too, with much
that was grey and dead, covered the broad
moor, which had been burnt in the spring.
My foot often caught in the dead stems of
furze withered by the flames. A lark rose
occasionally, else the expanse was vacant of
bird life — an immense distance only. There
was nothing but distance. How far was it
across this roll or undulation, how far was it

WILD EX MOOR. 31

to the coombe yonder, how far to the range of
hills beyond which rose higher than the high
moors, then to the second range farther still,
and to the third dim outline at the horizon ?

These were the questions which continu-
ally arose. They were the only thoughts
suggested by so much distance. The eye
had nothing to rest on ; it kept travelling
farther, and whichever way I turned still
there was the same space. It was twenty
miles to the white cloud yonder looking
through the air, and so it was twenty miles
to the ridge, not the farthest, under it. The
moor undulated on, now a coombe, now a
rise, now pale grey-green where the surface
had been burnt, and then dark where the
heather was high ; the moor undulated on,
and it was twenty miles to the ridge and
twenty to the cloud, and there was nothing
between me and the cloud and the hill. A
noise of thunder came, weary and travelling

RED DEER.

with difficulty. I glanced round ; I could
not see any cloud of thunderous character.
How far could it have come ? In enclosed
countries thunder is not heard more than
ten miles, but at this height — this seemingly
level moor is twelve hundred feet above the
sea — it may come how far ?

Across from the Welsh mountains, over
the Bristol Channel, up from the Devon-
shire tors, whence it is impossible to tell.
I think the low boom reached me up the
wind, but gazing under my hand for shade
from the glare of the sun I cannot see any
threatening vapour. There is only space,
and sound perhaps may travel almost to
infinity in space. The wind is cool, the sun
fiery hot, the dry thin grass rustles under
foot, and the dead furze stems, bleached by
the weather, crack if stepped on. I wonder
how far I have walked ; the undulation
whence I started has long disappeared be-

WILD EXMOOR. 33

hind another, and there is a third in front.
I have crossed several boggy places, and
passed many turf-ponds, and through acres
of cotton-grass, waving like little white flags
in the wind, and that is all; no hedges,
no trees, no bushes even to mark progress
by, not so much as a tall fern.

The low boom of thunder comes again
out of the infinity of space, reminding me
of the profundity around, but I will not
look — I will not let my glance travel farther
than what I judge must be half a mile or
so ahead. By an effort I check it there,
and will not look farther. I make an en-
closure about me to shut out the vastness.
In the shadowless open the sun's heat over-
powers the wind, and renders movement
laborious over the uneven ground. At last
there is a hollow ; it is the top, the shallow
upper end of a coombe, which deepens as

it descends into a valley. A spring rises

c

34 RED DEER.

here, and by it there are a few short firs
and bushes, quite out of sight from the level
of the moor; for there are trees in the
hollows, but the glance of necessity passes
high over them. Beyond the spring is a
wall ; neither deer nor ponies heed it in the
least, and even the sheep can climb most of
the walls. Within the wall I enter on the
heather, rising nearly to the knee, and tiring
to walk through, unless you follow paths or
select places less thickly covered.

The tips of the heather are fresh and
green, but the stems are dry and arid-look-
ing; they are wiry, hard, and unyielding.
Another distance, I do not know how far,
of dry dark heather continually fraying
against my knees, is traversed, when in front
appears a coombe, overgrown with heather
from summit to foot, and I stop suddenly.
On the opposite slope are five hinds lying
down, their heads visible above the heather,

' On the opposite slope are five hinds lying down."— Page 34.

WILD EXMOOR.

but too far for a good view. To stalk them
it is necessary to go round the head, or
shallow upper end of the coombe (a mile is
nothing), and so get the wind to blow from
them. Their scent is so quick that to ap-
proach down the wind is useless ; they would
scent me and be up and away long before I
could get near. The hollow of the coombe
carries the wind somewhat aslant just there
from its general direction like a tube, else I
think they would have scented me as it is.

As I start to go round the head of the
coombe, suddenly some one whistles loudly,
evidently as a signal to a friend, two loud
notes ; it is very annoying. The hinds will
be off alarmed ; I am surprised that they
remain quiet ; another whistle, and a bird,
like a large peewit, but with pointed wings,
crosses the coombe, rolling from side to side
as it flies. It is a curlew — his whistle
exactly resembled that of a man, but the

38 RED DEER.

deer were not deceived. On the moors
curlew is locally pronounced almost with-
out a vowel between the c and the r, and
the lew as loo — cr-loo, the accent being on
the last syllable. After a long detour,
out of sight of the deer, I approached the
coombe again from the opposite side, and
found them presently. They had risen, and
were feeding up the coombe, rather above
me ; I could see them cropping the green
tips of the heather. They were rather of
a brown than a red colour, their necks
straight, and by the tail almost white. They
fed in single file, and the wind coming from
them, I crept up still nearer, almost within
gunshot, till the leading hind, turning to
pick at one side, saw me.

She viewed me intently a moment, and
then jerked her head up, at which signal
the other four lifted their heads with the
same quick jerk and looked at me. The

WILD EXMOOR.

39

leader lifted her head still higher, her ears
at a sharp angle, and in another moment
went off at a good pace, followed hy the
rest. Hardly had they started, than three
more hinds appeared — they had been feed-
ing lower in the coombe out of sight, and
raced after the five. Two of them were

^s^s^s^ffi ,

*/---.^££,-T**r&

" The whole eight paused in a group and watched me."

heavy in calf. So soon as they felt safe,
having got over a few hundred yards, the
whole eight paused in a group and watched
me. After a moment or two they trotted
again, again stopped and gazed at me; and
then taking no further notice, as I showed

40 RED DEER.

no sign of pursuit, they began to graze,
and so moved slowly on over the hill.

By the edge of the coombe I found their
path ; it was well trodden, and evidently
much used ; the heather was all bent down
one way, leaning over downhill, but the
dry stems and the hard ground had taken
no impression or slot. In the dry heather
the heat of the sun seemed greater than
where the surface had been burnt, and
walking was slow and difficult. But in a
short time another coombe opened — the
upper shallow end of a valley — and on the
opposite side I saw a stag. He was lying
down, but immediately got up, and looked
straight across at me. His horns, in velvet,
were not so high as his ears, but his coat
was in perfect condition, a beautiful red gold
colour, and he was a runnable deer, that
is, of age and size sufficient for the chase.
After a glance at me he turned, showing

WILD EX MOOR. 41

the whiter colour of his tail, and went
quickly over the rising ground.

As he started, a second male deer jumped
up from the heather, and followed him. This
was younger and smaller, and not nearly so
red — not much brighter in coat than a hind.
A runnable stag generally has a companion
like this with him. They were over the
hill quickly, and I followed ; they had, how-
ever, disappeared when I reached the place.
A curlew whistled again, and suddenly three
heath-poults sprang up and flew hurriedly
away. Heath-poults, the female of black-
game, fly like a great partridge ; they seem
to have the same curved wings, which appear
crescent -shaped as they go. These heavy
birds are as large as pheasants ; the hen,
or heath-poult, is in general terms brown,
but it is a brown with buff under, crossed
in squares, or checks, a pattern very diffi-
cult to imitate.

42 RED DEER.

Next I came to a coombe-head in which
ran a streamlet, and at its sides were some
small larches in their first green, pleasant
to see among the dry dark heather. At
this clear spring the deer often drink, and
the cover — it is hardly a cover, for there
are only a few trees — is a favourite spot
with them to pass the day. There was no
stag here in harbour at present ; still, I
stayed awhile by the splashing rivulet of
water under the green larches between the
rocky sides of the coombe. Out in the ex-
panse of heather the open distances were
oppressive ; here in the hollow, with green
to enclose the eye-glance, the solitude was
a delight. The deer had been here quite
recently, for there was fresh slot, or foot-
marks, both of stags and hinds, on a sandy
path they used. All the' coombes, the top
or beginning of which I had passed, gra-
dually deepen as the groove descends the

WILD EXMOOR. 43

hill, till at the bottom they open upon a
wide valley at right angles, in which flows
the Badgeworthy Water. Each of these
rivulets goes to increase its stream, in
which full many a noble stag has come
to bay.

Over the valley rises a hill of red rock
thinly grown with oak — Badgeworthy Wood
— the green foliage of the oaks was faintly
yellow (spring yellow), and the red rock
showed between them. Dark heather, dark
and yet with some under-shade of purple,
covered the great slopes to the left of the
Wood. None of these colours, the yellow-
green of the oaks, the redness of the rocks,
the dark purple of the heather, were bright ;
they were toned and quiet, yet perfectly dis-
tinct in the brilliant sunshine. At the first
glance the colour was scarcely noticed ; in
a moment the eye became conscious of it,
and soon learned that to describe the scene

44 RED DEER.

these tints must be alluded to. Gradually
the hues deepened as they were gazed at,
till the great hillside grew aglow with the
light they reflected.

All the view — the slopes, the wood, the
heather — was instinct with the presence of
the wild deer ; though sheltering in har-
bour from the heat, they were there. They
had passed under the green larches, which
were scarcely high enough to give me
shade — the sun at noon looked down be-
tween the trees — they had drunk from the
stream by the sallow, whose dark boughs
overhung it. I could have stayed and
dreamed there by the splashing water, but
there were yet more distances to be got
over. I climbed up the rocky side, and
from thence could see along the Badge-
worthy Valley to the dull red precipice of
rocky fragments that overlooks the Lynn.
Passing more undulations of the moor there

WILD EXMOOR. 45

opened another coombe, this time deep and
wide, and on the side towards me covered
by a thick growth of larches. On the
other it was bare.

As I followed a deer- path on the high
ground at the edge, but above the copse, I
continually saw marks of deer, slot of stag
and hind ; some had been walking and
some galloping. Three blackcocks rose and
flew down the coombe, showing white streaks
among their black feathers ; a bird, too,
like a cuckoo rose from the ground, and
flew to a little larch and perched on the
top. When I came nearer it flew on again,
and blundered into another larch ; doubt-
less a goat-sucker, or fern-owl, clumsy by
day but swift at night. Suddenly two stags
broke cover out on the bare hillside oppo-
site ; they stopped and looked towards me.
It was a splendid sight, for they were so
near, within a stone's -throw, and being on

46 RED DEER.

bare ground they were visible from slot to
brow. They were the same two I had seen
previously on the heather, but then fur-
ther off.

On the ruddy golden coat of the warrant-
able deer the bright sunlight shone, so that
the colour seemed unsteady, or as if it was
visibly emanating and flowing forth in un-
dulations. The same thing may be seen
about the white squares of rifle-targets under
the midsummer sun; though white, square,
and therefore by analogy well defined, there
is an unsteadiness of surface as if it came
a little towards you, and was wavy. The
deer are called red, and a few really appear
very red against the heather, but the greater
number of the stags are of a russet-gold,
and the hinds always more or less brown. I
do not know how to describe the stag's coat,
as he stood and looked at me, except by some
conjuncture of the colours red, or ruddy and

WILD EXMOOR. 47

gold. Underneath the russet-red of the coat
there is a rich golden tint glowing through it.
Away he went the next minute, up the
steep coombe - side, and as he went, fol-
lowed by his companion, the difference was
marked between their pace and that of the
hinds. Stags throw their forefeet out much
farther, and hold their necks high, thrown
back ; their going is so different, that by it
alone they can be distinguished at a dis-
tance from hinds. At the summit they
stayed again and regarded me, then moved
another quarter of a mile, and again looked
back ; and so constantly stopping to watch
me, by degrees fetched a circle, and re-
turned to the same cover far down in the
coombe. I have called these stags for the
convenience of writing, but strictly, in deer
language, the largest one old enough for
hunting was a stag; the other they would
now call a young male deer ; in the olden

RED DEER.

time he would have been called a brocke
or brocket.

As I turned from the fir- cover out into
the moor I noticed a small shrub of rhodo-
dendron flowering brightly among the dark
heather, far indeed from those tennis-lawns
with which it is associated about town. It
was the only flower at that time in all the
miles of dark moor over which I had
walked under the burning sun. Some one
had planted it, some one who loved the
tall deer. If you can find it — if- — you will
find a spot both wild and beautiful, for
there the distances are relieved by the
green firs of the coombe, and the oaks of
the wood across the valley. But the boom
of thunder again rolling under an unclouded
sun once more reminded me of the im-
measurable horizon of Exmoor.

49

III.

DEER IN SUMMER.

A PATH leads along the edge of a round
green hill standing by itself in the midst
of the dark heather -covered moors which
overlook it. In shape it resembles a skull-
cap of green velvet imitated in sward, or it
might be a great tennis-ball cut in two.
This is Cloutsham Ball, and it looks like a
green ball among the surrounding heather,
contrasting in its colour and in its form
with the moors. They undulate in long
swelling contours ; the Ball is globular. So
round and smooth is the outline, that had it
been carved with the chisel it could hardly
have been more regular. From a distance
it appears much smaller than it is, a mere

50 RED DEER.

toy at the foot of the vast moors, but it is
a mathematical fact that the spheroid form
concentrates more substance in a given mea-
surement than any other.

Afar, too, the glance naturally rests on
the top, and does not observe the enlarge-
ment of the base. The illusion is increased
by the division of the summit into four
fields by a wall in the shape of a Maltese
cross. Four meadows are nothing in the
midst of the expanse to which one is accus-
tomed on the hills, but in reality the base
of the Ball is a very long way round. There
are projecting stones for steps in the wall
on the summit, by which it can be climbed,
and the path followed along the edge of
the Ball. The sward is hard to the foot-
steps, for it does but cover the rock beneath ;
there is grass, but no turf. Brake fern grows
towards the verge, and bushes and brambles
fringe it. Putting the foot carelessly on a

DEER IN SUMMER. 51

bunch of grass, the loose stones it conceals
slip, and it is necessary to quickly grasp a
stout stem of fern to avoid a fall.

Reddish stones lie by the bushes, some
on the surface, and others partly embedded
in the ground. Red stones are everywhere
under the grass ; some of them roll at a
touch. Looking down the descent increases
in steepness, for the trunks of the oaks
beneath are almost parallel with the side
of the hill. It is possible to get down, but
the loose stones would render it awkward,
and even dangerous in places to those
unused to such footing. The deer go up
and down, and pass along the steepest parts
easily, entering the meads on the summit
where the grass is fresh and sweet, for they
will always have the best of everything.
They have their own especial tracks across
and aslant the Ball ; the thin grass and
hard red stones do not show much im-

52 RED DEER.

pression, still their paths can be traced
by the worn sward and by the hollow
their hoofs work in the stones like a
shallow farrow.

A hawthorn bush in bloom has the ends
of many of its boughs cut off as if with a
knife. This was done by the deer in early
spring, when the first green leaves came
forth, sappy and sweet, and were eagerly
nibbled. I cannot look round while pick-
ing a way over this grassy and yet rugged
ground without risk of stumbling, but on
pausing a moment the shape of the place
is evident. Across a deep valley — a rifle-
shot distant — rises a steep slope covered
with oak. Openings in the oaks are green
with brake, and where the fern has not
grown the reddish hue of the loose stones
is visible. The slope is far higher than the
hill on which I stand, and extends right
and left, surrounding me. To the left it

DEER IN SUMMER. 53

is all woods ! woods ! woods ! — a valley of
woods, interminable oak, under which hun-
dreds of deer might hide. On the right
it is heather — thousands of acres of heather
— gradually expanding into the mountainous
breadth of Dunkery Beacon.

Now in June the heather is dark, yet be-
neath the darkness there are faint shades of
purple and green ; it looks dry and heated
under the sunshine. Dunkery towers over
as if the green Ball were a molehill. I
can see now that a deep trench — a natural
fosse — surrounds me on every side, except
where a neck of land like a drawbridge
gives access to the mount. Go in what
direction you will, you are met by this
immense circular trench, and beyond that
by a steep and high ascent. The heather
and the woods of the opposite slopes wind
round you, so that by merely crossing the
summit of the mount you change one view

54 RED DEER.

over miles of heather for another over miles
of wood.

It is a great natural stage erected in the
centre of a circular theatre of moor and
forest, and the spectator has only to face in
different directions to watch the hunt travel
round him. While the hunt has to go miles,
he has but to stroll a few hundred yards;
presently the deer, breaking cover, comes
up over the summit of the Ball by one of
its scarcely visible paths, and crosses it in
front of him within a stone's-throw. If an
army had cast up a rocky stand for a Xerxes
to view the sport, they could not have done
it more effectually.

1 divide the broad heather slope opposite
into sections mentally, so as to be able to
search it thoroughly for deer. Merely to
glance at so wide an expanse would be use-
less ; the only way is to examine it piece
by piece from the summit to the valley, as

DEER IN SUMMER. 55

if it were marked in lines like a map. From
a spot where the heather is thin and the
red stones show, to a bush, is one division ;
between a rough track and a hollow is an-
other; there is then a slight change in the
colour of the surface, sufficient to form a
resting-place for the eye, and beyond that
some mountain sheep are settled. I look
slowly down each of these parallels, com-
mencing at the summit and letting the eye
gradually descend, so that the vision does not
miss the least portion. Every acre is thus
examined, and nothing could be missed.
Some sheep on the ridge for a moment
attract attention ; either there is a slight
vapour there, or it is an effect of mirage,
for they appear larger than sheep, but their
motions are not those of deer. Neither stag
nor hind is feeding nor lying down in the
heather.

The oak woods cannot be so scrutinised ;

56 RED DEER.

their shadowy masses are impenetrable, and
all that can be done is to look into each
opening where fern occupies the space be-
tween the trees. Under the oak boughs
and in the thickets the stags can lie per-
fectly unseen ; and the brake, too, is high
enough to hide them if- lying down. In
June the deer spend the whole of the day
in the covers out of the heat. At this
time they are more shy than at any other,
both stags and hinds retiring out of sight.
The stags' antlers are as yet only partially
grown, and while these weapons are soft and
tender they conceal themselves. The hinds
have their calves only recently dropped, or
are about to calve, and consequently keep
in the thickest woods.

One might walk across the entire width
of the North Forest, and not see a single
deer, and yet be in the midst of them ; and
so it is common for fishermen to whip for

DEER IN SUMMER.

57

trout day after day for weeks together along
streams which wind through favourite covers
without obtaining a glimpse of deer. Wild

and shy, they are lost in the foliage of
their woods, and are only to be found with
much labour and in certain particular places.

RED DEER.

At Cloutsham occasionally they may be ob-
served lying among the heather opposite,
those deer that keep to the hill being less
regular in retiring to the woods than the rest.
A stag, too, sometimes comes out from his
harbour, and may be viewed under the oaks.
There are none visible to-day on this side
of the Ball, so I walk round the mount,
passing a very large mountain-ash in flower ;
a branch has been broken from it, but it is
still a fine tree. The mountain-ash grows
freely on the hillsides wherever a tree can
take root. A sound which I thought I
heard just now rises and becomes distinctly
audible; it is the rush of swift water, and
comes up through the oaks from the hollow
of the giant fosse. The name of the stream
is Horner Water, flowing by Horner Wood
along the bottom of the deep trench. A
wind draws across the summit of the Ball,
bending the brake stems and stirring the

DEER IN SUMMER. 59

mountain ash. It is pleasant in the shade
to feel the cool air and listen to the water
far below.

Is that a spot of red yonder in an opening
between the oaks — is it a stag? Colour it
is of some kind against the fern, but my
eyes have become so weary with intently
gazing that I think they would recognise
any hue as the red for which they are look-
ing. After resting them a few moments on
the brake and grass at my feet, I look again,
and see at once that it is a piece of faded
furze ; the yellow bloom is going, and it
was this that deceived me. No apparent
connection exists between red and yellow ;
it proves how weary the visual nerves must
be when they can only determine that it is
colour, and cannot distinguish hues. I have
been gazing intently for an hour, scarcely
closing the lids, and under the bright light
of a summer noon. It is not just glancing

60 RED DEER.

across, but the careful mapping of every acre
that has strained them. Merely looking for
a few moments downwards at the grass
under foot completely restored the power of
distinguishing colour.

I went on further, and stayed again to
examine a reddish spot ; this time it was
where a path could be seen for a yard or
two under the oaks. A third time a frag-
ment of rock held the glance for a second
or two ; no, that is not the shape nor the
tint wished for. These great woods will
disappoint me ; I shall not see any deer,
but I will go down and walk, or rather
climb, through them somehow. Suddenly,
as I looked once more, I caught sight of a
red mark in the midst of an acre of brake
surrounded by oak. I was sure it was a
stag instantly by the bright colour, by the
position, and yet if questioned I could not
have positively asserted that I had any

DEER IN SUMMER. 61

reason for my opinion at all. Certainty
does not always depend upon proofs that
can be explained. A secret judgment exists
in the mind and acts on perceptions too
delicate to be registered. I was certain it
was a stag, and the glass at once confirmed
my eyes.

He was standing in the fern beside a bush,
with his head down as if feeding. The great
oak woods were about him, above and below,
and the sunlight fell on the golden red of
his coat. A whistle — the sound was a mo-
ment or two reaching him — made him lift
his head, and the upright carriage of the
neck proved again that it was a stag and
not a hind. His antlers had not yet risen
as high as his ears. Another whistle — he
lifted his head yet higher but did not move,
for he knew he was safe. The whistle
sounded to him faint across the hollow
space, and his keen eyes and still keener

62 RED DEER.

nostrils assured him that there was no
danger. I wished to see him closer, and
went down a path which descends the side
of the green mount.

The path is a groove worn in loose and
sliding stones, steep and slippery because
the stones give way, yet it is down this
that the huntsman rides and those who
follow him. I found it awkward enough
on foot till under the oaks lower down,
where there were fewer loose red stones.
Here the sound of rushing water grew much
louder, and in a minute or two the stream
appeared, running at a great speed over the
rocky fragments of its bed. Across this
beautiful stream a tree had been thrown
and hewn flat at the upper side ; this, with
a hand-rail, formed a bridge for foot pas-
sengers. Upon the opposite side a track
went beside the water through the woods.
Stalking silently along the path, I came

DEER IN SUMMER. 63

presently under the stag, and watched him
from behind a tree ; he was so near that
his slightest motion was visible.

He stood breast-deep in brake, and there
was a purple foxglove in flower just beside
him. There seemed the least possible fleck
of white among the golden russet of his
side. After I had looked long enough, a
shout sent him with one bound into the
thicket ; and although the boughs did not
appear very close together, he was immedi-
ately hidden. He moved easily along the
steep slope where even hounds sometimes
find a difficulty in following.

Some distance further I found another
foot-bridge made of a smoothed tree, and sat
down upon it at the verge of the brook.
Insects had emerged from the timber, leav-
ing their cases stretching forth from the
mouths of their drilled holes. The timber
was furrowed and gouged by the mandibles

RED DEER.

of wasps, who had carried the wood away
for the paper of their nests. Ferns on the
bank, and conferva? on the rocky fragments,
gave the stream a green tint ; the reflection
of the oak boughs over did not form a
clear image, but was drawn along by the
irregular motion, forming a green surface.
Red rocks beneath the water, and dark
places where it was deeper, added a brown
hue. The beautiful brook ran strong and
swift in all the vigour of youth, caring
nothing for the stones over which it leaped.
By its side oak-trees stood ; the glance
passed for a long way between the trunks,
and the ground was thickly grown with fern
and foxglove. The hillside in places over-
hung, and large roots descended like pillars
to support it.

On either hand the steep slopes of the
valley were wooded to the top, and yonder
the round green summit of the Ball ap-

" The deer rush to the swift brook."— Page 67.

E

DEER IN SUMMER. 67

peared above the trees. The height could
be estimated by the diminution in the ap-
parent size of the oaks. At such a stream
Rosalind might have slaked her thirst and
found her name carved close by in the soft
bark of a mountain-ash ; it is a spot where
the influence of Shakespeare is unconsci-
ously felt. The interest the scene itself
arouses is so much increased by the pre-
sence of the deer, for though unseen in
the summer noon, they are certainly here
as wild as ever they were in fair Rosa-
lind's time. This is their favourite stream ;
they come down to it to drink at mid-
day, and return to the cover to wait till
night.

When the tufters enter the woods — that
is, the hounds detached from the pack to
force the deer to break cover — the deer rush
to the swift brook, aware that it leaves no
scent. To and fro the stream they race,

68 RED DEER.

and in their terror will often pass under
people standing on the foot-bridge. Till
absolutely compelled they will not leave the
water ; they will return to it again and again
a little lower down, and are only driven
from it with continued chasing. Frequently,
if roused far away on the open moors of the
North Forest, they will make at once straight
for Homer Water. Then again, after a long
run, when they feel their strength ebbing,
they will circle back to die in their beloved
stream. There is a projecting rock by the
brook, standing out from the hillside, to
which a stag once retreated, and, with his
back to the precipice, kept the hounds at
bay. It was the same as if he had been at
the end of a steep wall, and he would never
have been driven from his position by the
hounds unaided by man. Stags will often
do this when they can no longer keep in
front of the pack.

DEER IN SUMMER. 69

A high projecting rock, or a narrow path
that will only permit the hounds to approach
them in one direction, is a fortress. A stag
can face the hounds and defend himself
with his terrible brow-points so long as
they are obliged to meet him. But he
knows he cannot fight successfully if as-
sailed from all sides ; baffled by so many,
he is ultimately pulled down. So the stag
chooses an isolated rock, or a narrow foot-
path, as at Glenthorne, with inaccessible
rocky walls above and beneath, and then
turns on his pursuers. As he runs he
thinks, and reviews in his mind the various
places he has visited previously. His course
is not determined by accident but by fore-
thought. He sees the river in his mind,
the river at which he has so often quenched
his thirst, and fleetly travels towards it.
He remembers the rock, or the precipitous
footpath, and hastens thither. He thinks

70 RED DEER.

of a pond, and takes it in his way to cool
himself by a plunge.

Homer Wood is so large and difficult
that there is always much trouble in getting
the deer to quit it. Sometimes the hounds
divide, and follow two. A hind thus pur-
sued by a few hounds and hard pressed,
threw them off by crossing the stream, and
took refuge in the fern high up the hill.
But she had been observed by a runner;
he called the hounds, and with the greatest
difficulty climbed up over the loose stones.
He put them right on her ; she sprang from
the spot, overthrowing him in her wild haste,
but the hounds had the scent, and she was
taken. Sometimes a stag will not leave
Horner Water at all. On being roused he
goes to the stream and runs down it for
miles, out from the woodlands, through the
cultivated plain, right to the shore of
the Channel, and then to sea, never quit-

DEER IN SUMMER.

71

ting the water from the first start to his
death.

Where the woods cease and the coombe
opens stands Homer Mill, which has a

72 RED DEER.

large iron overshot wheel exposed at the
side of the building. Deer running down
the stream usually break from it as they
come to the hatch just above the mill-wheel,
and go round the mill, which blocks their
course along the brook. Once a hind closely
followed was so beset by the hounds that,
unable to quit the brook, she leaped from
the sluice on to the top of the revolving
wheel. The immense iron wheel carried
her over and threw her to the ground, dis-
abling her. She was immediately killed to
prevent suffering. Marks of the passage of
a traction-engine may be seen in the road
to the mill; it is used to draw loads to
and from the place, and comes to the edge
of the haunts of the deer — the most modern
of machines beside the ancient chase.

Returning to the Ball, the path up it over
the loose stones seems yet steeper than when
descending. On the summit it now goes

DEER IN SUMMER.

73

among oaks standing wide apart; through
these, deer sometimes run, one of their
tracks leading up here and over the mount.
Cloutsham Farm stands where the neck of

land connects the round green mount with
the general level of the moors. The old
thatched house — it is one of Sir Thomas
Acland's thatched houses — has a hearth as

74 RED DEER.

wide as that of a hunting lodge should be,
and an arched inner doorway of oak. A
rude massiveness characterises the place. A
balcony on the first floor overlooks the
steepest part of the vast natural fosse sur-
rounding the mount, and the mountainous
breadth of Dunkery Beacon rises exactly
opposite, shutting out the lower half of
the sky.

Something is now moving among the
heather near the summit, so distant and
so dim that it is difficult to distinguish
what it is. But the sheep yonder are white
and these three animals are dark, a little
inclined to redness. They move quickly in
line, and are larger than sheep ; they must
be hinds. It is only when endeavouring to
determine what any particular object is, that
you recognise the breadth and height of the
Beacon side. It is much farther and much
higher than the eye at first acknowledges.

DEER IN SUMMER. 75

A level yet elevated spot called Sweetre, or
Sweet Tree, at the foot of Dunkery, where
there is some sward and furze, is much fre-
quented by deer. For years they haunted
it ; they still do so, but not so much now,
for they change from place to place accord-
ing to their wild caprice.

76 RED DEER.

IV.

ANTLER AND FERN.

THE green stem of the brake fern as it rises
unrolls at the top, and when these coils
appear in the spring the stag's new horns
begin to grow. Fern and antler start to-
gether; the fern is easily found, for it is
soon taller than the thin grass, but the
stag conceals himself in the cover, and it
is not easy to know to what stage he has
arrived. But his new antlers grow with
the fern, and as that reaches a good height
so his horns begin to overtop his ears.
Brake is later on the moors than in the
warm southern counties ; for although Ex-
moor is in the same latitude, it is so exposed
that grass and flower are behind the time

ANTLER AND FERN. 77

usual elsewhere. Brake, however, grows
rapidly when it once rises out of the bare
ground at the sides of the coombes, or be-
tween the oaks of the covers, and soon has
knots, or rather branches — where, if cut
across, the figure of an oak-tree appears.
When the heated August atmosphere has
begun to tint the fern in southern counties
with a faint yellow, stag-hunting commences.
The deer are fond of the fern to hide in,
and they sometimes take a little of the tips
of the fronds. Immense quantities of fern
are cut and carried away, both on the moors
and the Quantock Hills — which are moors
too — for use as litter. All the deer country
is full of ferns — on the slopes, in the woods,
the hedgerows, the walls, and the sides
of old buildings — from the tree-like brake
down to the little wall-rue, they flourish
luxuriantly. The hinds seek the cover of
the ferns when their calves are born, and

78 RED DEER.

there hide them ; and the little creatures
lie through the heat of the summer day
among it. Fawn has a pleasanter sound
than calf, but by all the rules of venery,
ancient and modern, the young of the fallow
deer are fawns, those of the tall red deer
are called calves. Upon the moors the
ferns grow principally towards coombes and
covers, more so than among the heather ;
and these coombes, with water and shade,
are the favourite haunts of the deer.

Every wall they climb over is covered with
fern in summer. These walls are made of
loose flat stones, between the joints of which
the pennywort leaves come forth and send
up a stalk to bear the flowers — the leaves
are round like green pennies. Though less
conspicuous the pennyworts are almost as
numerous as the ferns, and the two are often
crushed under the deer's hoofs, or slot. It
is the hinds who climb the walls ; the stags

ANTLER AND FERN. 79

leap to the top, which is always broad, and
then down the other side. Hinds get their
forefeet — it is inconvenient to write slot
always — on the top of the wall, and their
hind hoofs dig into the earth and loose
stone, making a sort of step.

They soon open a gap in the hedge on
the top of the wall by going through so
often, night after night, always at the same
spot, and the step becomes well marked.
By this step in the wall the calf climbs up,
and follows his mother ; he could not spring
on to the top at once, and the hinds choose
the best places they can for their young to
get over. The pennyworts are crushed, the
fern broken down, and the red sand of the
bank dug out; while on the top a gap —
called a rack — is formed through the beech
hedge. By these racks the hinds and calves
pass from the moors into the cultivated
fields. Near the covers and coombes where

8o RED DEER.

the fern is thick the deer-paths are distinct.
In hind-hunting time the brake is bronzed,
or brown from frost ; it holds the dew, or
the thawed rime of the winter nights, and
soaks those who attempt to walk among it.
As it rises again in spring it helps to hide
the dropped antlers of the stag.

The antlers fall in March ; though so hard
and capable of giving a wound like a spear,
they are not fixed to the bone of the head,
nor do they grow like the cow's horn —
deeply rooted ; they seem, indeed, to have
scarcely any root or hold, and yet are per-
fectly firm till the proper time arrives to
shed them. The stag then retires into the
woods, and, it is believed, tries to drop his
horns in a place where he thinks they are
least likely to be found. He separates him-
self from his companion stags, and keeps
alone at this moment. It is possible that
he may drag brambles or branches over the

ANTLER AND FERN. Si

dropped antlers if they chance to grow at
hand; for it is remarkable that few horns
are found compared to the number that must
be shed, and those that are found are more
often single horns than pairs. Certainly the
extent of the woods is very great, but they
are traversed by gamekeepers and others,
the moors are crossed by shepherds, and all
keep a keen look-out for horns which are
valuable.

A good pair will fetch ^5 ; as much as
£10 has been given for a pair with a
remarkable number of points. These prices
alone show that it is not so easy to find a
pair of dropped antlers as might be ima-
gined. A gamekeeper, in one wood, one
season found eight horns running, all single,
that is, belonging to one side of the head
only. Many of the horns sold are really
odd antlers, and were dropped by different
stags ; these are fitted together, and gene-

F

82 RED DEER.

rally to a hind's head. The stag's head is
the property of the Master of the Stag-
hounds, and it is taken possession of for
him when a stag is killed ; consequently
few genuine heads of the red stag come
into the market.

To all but a "forester good," a hind's
head looks as natural as a stag's when fitted
with horns, and fastened to the wall. A
single horn will bring a sovereign, and it
is by collecting these single horns that
most of the pairs are formed, excluding, of
course, those presented by the Master. Few
pairs thus put together are good, and some
very inferior. Somehow or other the stags,
and those that bear good heads especially,
have a way of dropping their antlers in the
most unlikely places. Leaves that have
fallen from the beech-trees and hedges are
blown along by the spring gales and cover
them, dead ferns droop over, and their

ANTLER AND FERN. 83

colour is but little different from the grey
grass and dead branches. Or the heather
conceals the horn, and it is possible to walk
right over it without seeing it.

An ardent forester who was racing on
foot after the hounds, the pack being in
full cry, caught his foot in descending a
coombe-side, and rolled some distance. He
supposed it was a furze stem, or a tree root,
but on rising he chanced to look at his foot,
and found it firmly fixed in a stag's antler.
He had trod, as he ran, right between the
two points on top, which threw him like a
trap, and over he went, carrying the horn
with him in his descent. So well had the
antler been concealed by the heather that
he had not seen it, and would not have
known of its existence had he not stepped
on it. It seems as if the antlers were more
often found by chance than when carefully
looked for, which has given rise to the idea

84 RED DEER.

that the stag anticipates intelligent search,
and hides accordingly.

An antler is judged by the number of
points or tines which spring from the beam.
The beam is the main stem, and the points
are the branches. The beam itself varies
much, and is valued according to its round-
ness and thickness. Some are very thick,
and others spindly, like a tree that has
been drawn up beyond its strength in a
plantation. Close to the head a point
springs from the beam and is curved up-
wards : this is called the brow-point. Just
over it a second starts, in shape resembling
the first, but not so long or large : this is
called the bay. These two are close together,
and defend the brow of the stag. There is
then an interval, till some way up the beam, or
main stem, a third — the tray — appears. At
the upper end the antler divides into three
points, called three on top. This is a full

ANTLER AND FERN. 85

horn ; brow, bay, tray, and three on top, or
six points a side for each antler — twelve
for the pair. Sometimes there are additional
points starting from the beam like the tray,
but not so long, making thirteen, or more,
points to th'e antlers. Besides these, little
knobs appear on the beam like points about
to grow, which are said to be " offers," as
if a point had offered to grow there.

In reckoning an antler with these they
say twelve points (or more, as the case may
be) and an offer. Twelve is sometimes ex-
ceeded, as many as fifteen, and even in
one case twenty points and offers having
been known. Not all the antlers reach
twelve, generally failing in the top-points.
Often there are only two on the top instead
of three, and sometimes the top of the
antler is not divided and only gives one
point. Occasionally the absence of the top
points is the result of malformation, but is

RED DEER.

usually a sign that the stag had not reached
maturity.

The length and thickness of the beam or
stem, the number of points and offers of
points, and the width between the tips of
the horns as they grow on the head are all
reckoned in estimating antlers. Such are
the terms commonly used in the present day
on Exmoor ; but in ancient times connois-
seurs of the chase had numerous others, such
as the burr, the pearls, the gutters, royals,
and sur-royals. Crowned heads and forked
heads, however, are still spoken of when the
antler forks, or when the points draw to-
gether in the outline of a crown.

The ancient terms began with the " burr ; "
this was the thickened base of the horn (or
beam) where it joins the head. It is there
enlarged and rough like the base of an oak-
tree at the ground. " Burr," as a term ex-
pressive of bulging, is still in use by black-

ANTLER AND FERN. 87

smiths, who speak of raising a "burr" on a
rivet by hammering it — the " burr " is the
bulging caused by the blows. Above the
" burr " came the brow-antlier, now the
brow-point ; next the bez-antlier, now the
bay (bez doubtless was pronounced bay).
The third point, now called the tray — French
tres, hunting terms are derived from Nor-
man-French— was then the royal, and the
top-points or crown was the sur-royal-top.
The gutters were the seams or grooves in
the main stem or beam ; the pearls appear
to have been the little knobs about the
" burr." Sometimes the brow-point was
called simply the antlier, and the bay the
sur-antlier, and the top the croche. There
was a complete science of reckoning an
antlier ; the meaning of some of the terms
seems to have varied with the number of
points, and there were many other minutiae.
Those now in use on Exmoor are distinct

RED DEER.

enough, and are given above as plainly as
possible.

It is characteristic of the English red deer
that the brow-points are always longer than
the bay-points, those next to them. Indian
deer have the bay-points longer than the
brow — exactly the reverse. A pair of Indian
antlers are fixed in the huntsman's porch at
Exford, and beside these he has a pair of
Exmoor horns, which he succeeded in getting
hold of, and which resemble the Indian in
this particular. For once the Exmoor horns
have the second points longest — the excep-
tion demonstrating the rule.

As the new horns grow on the stag's
head they are at first soft and even flexible,
and the stag is careful to avoid striking them
against anything. They are covered with a
skin called the velvet; it is of a brown
colour, soft, like plush. While this bark or
skin remains on the horn the stag is said to

ANTLER AND FERN 89

be in velvet and is not hunted. Towards
the end of July, as the horns become hard,
the skin is supposed to tickle and irritate,
and the stag rubs his head against trees to
get rid of it. By degrees it peels off, and
he is then in a fit condition for the chase.
One or two of the first stags killed generally
have remnants of the velvet adhering to the
horns, hanging in strips as they run. Frag-
ments of velvet are snatched up as trophies
by those in at the death ; but after the first
week the velvet has entirely gone, and no
more are killed with it.

A stag at bay is not to be approached
without great caution, for with his antlers
he can inflict formidable wounds. Hounds
are sometimes killed, and frequently injured.
The part of the antler with which most
mischief is done is the brow-point. This
starts from the brow near the head and
curves upwards, and when the stag holds

90 RED DEER.

his head low, as he does in delivering a
blow, the sharp end of the brow-point pro-
jects almost straight in front of him. The
two brow-points, one on each side, at that
moment resemble the points of a hay-fork,
or prong — called on Exmoor a pick — and
if he can catch a hound on either of the
tips he is certain to leave a terrible mark.
If he can get the hound between him and
a rock, or a stone or a bank, so as to have
something firm to push against, the brow-
point will transfix the hound like a spear.

These points indeed are sometimes called
spears. They are not so conspicuous as the
upper part of the antler, which would natu-
rally be supposed the most dangerous ; but
it is from these that wounds are generally
received. The tips are not sharp in the sense
that a dagger-point is said to be sharp ; they
are bluntly sharp, sufficiently so to penetrate
easily when driven with the tremendous force

ANTLER AND FERN. 91

of the stag's muscular neck. So long as he
can face the hounds with these, with rocks
at his side, or a precipice, so that they can
only run in in front, he can defy them. Now
and then it happens during a long run that
the main part of the pack is distanced by
one or two swift hounds. They leave the
pack behind and pursue unsupported. When
a stag becomes aware of this he will some-
times turn and face them in his path, know-
ing that he can deal with them.

One day a fine hound in advance like this
was suddenly confronted by the stag, who,
with a blow of the formidable brow-point,
ripped the hound open so that his entrails
touched the ground. The huntsman, coming
up, dismounted, and with his usual presence
of mind replaced the intestines in the gap-
ing wound ; by good fortune they were not
broken. He had no thread or needle, and
could not get any to sew up the wound, but

92 RED DEER.

he managed to fasten it together with pins.
In this condition the hound was carried
home, and the wound properly sewn up.
He recovered quickly, and in a very short
time was running again with the pack as if
nothing had occurred. A similar accident
happened to another hound ; only, in this
case a house being near, a needle and thread
were procured, and the wound sewn at
once. This hound, too, got well, and was
running about in a fortnight. The good
condition in which the hounds are kept no
doubt had much to do with this rapid
healing.

Instances are not uncommon of men get-
ting a blow from the antlers when a stag is
at bay. If he is not thoroughly exhausted
he will jerk his antlers viciously at any one
who comes near, and many have received
wounds by going in carelessly. The hunts-
man himself once had a knock in the face ;

ANTLER AND FERN. 93

the horn struck the left side of the nose
and ripped the skin off, fortunately doing no
further injury. The wound healed perfectly,
and gave no trouble ; he has never found it
necessary to use anything more than a little
Friar's Balsam for such hurts, and has never
known any harm come of them. There is
an ancient belief that hart's horns are poi-
sonous, and that wounds inflicted by them
are difficult to heal. Much may depend
upon the position of a wound, and also on
the state of health of the person injured,
but certainly experience with the Exmoor
harts is in favour of the horn not being
poisonous.

The whipper-in carries a waterproof bag,
and when the stag is killed the horns and
head are placed in it to preserve them from
disfigurement by blood or dirt. Sometimes
one antler has four points on the top, and
the other only three ; sometimes the top is

94 RED DEER.

hollow and will hold a glass of wine. Pipe-
bowls are made of the butt-end of the beam.
Besides being his' weapons of offence the
horns to some extent are the stag's armour.
As he starts he throws his head well back,
and the horns fit each side of his neck or
shoulder, and so guard him from the thick
thorn bushes into which he often plunges.
Young hounds sometimes seize the antler,
but quickly leave hold. The new horns, as
before observed, begin to grow with the
brake fern, and the velvet is rubbed off
towards the end of July, or beginning of
August, so that they take four months to
come to this complete state. At the same
time the hart or stag sheds his coat, and
in June appears in his full red-gold colour.

In October again, as the stag-hunting
ceases, the horns are employed in fighting,
the stags then combating for their lady-loves.
The life of a stag is indeed so bound up

ANTLER AND FERN. 95

with the growth and condition of his antlers
that it may be said to begin and end with
them. Before they are high enough to be
dignified as horns the young male deer runs
with the hinds and herds with them. There
is little difference in their appearance, and
it sometimes happens in the hind-hunting
season that a young male deer is chased
for some time till the mistake is discovered.
The outline of the face is broader and
shorter — a hind's face looks longer — and by
this the heads may be distinguished. As
he grows older, and the antlers each season
become larger, the deer leaves the hinds
and joins the stags, feeding and harbouring
in company with one of them. At last a
full-grown stag, he is in his turn master,
and has a companion, as it were, to fag
for him. In his old age the antlers each
year diminish in points and size, the beam
becomes thinner, and from four on top the

96 RED DEER.

points dwindle to three, and then to two,
so as to look like those of a young stag.

There is no more beautiful creature than
a stag in his pride of antler, his coat of
ruddy gold, his grace of form and motion.
He seems the natural owner of the ferny
coombes, the oak woods, the broad slopes of
heather. They belong to him, and he steps
upon the sward in lordly mastership. The
land is his, and the hills, the sweet streams,
and rocky glens. He is infinitely more
natural than the cattle and sheep that have
strayed into his domains. For some inex-
plicable reason, although they too are in
reality natural, when he is present they look
as if they had been put there and were kept
there by artificial means. They do not, as
painters say, shade in with the colours and
shape of the landscape. He is as natural
as an oak, or a fern, or a rock itself. He is
earth-born — autochthon — and holds posses-

" Proud as a Spanish noble."— Poj/e 99.

ANTLER AND FERN. 99

sion by descent. Utterly scorning control,
the walls and hedges are nothing to him —
he roams where he chooses, as fancy leads,
and gathers the food that pleases him.

Pillaging the crops and claiming his dues
from the orchards and gardens, he exercises
his ancient feudal rights, indifferent to the
laws of house-people. Disturb him in his
wild stronghold of oak wood or heather, and,
as he yields to force, still he stops and looks
back proudly. He is slain, but never con-
quered. He will not cross with the tame
park deer ; proud as a Spanish noble, he dis-
dains the fallow deer, and breeds only with
his own race. But it is chiefly because of
his singular adaptation and fitness to the
places where he is found that he obtains
our sympathy.

The branching antlers accord so well with
the deep shadowy boughs and the broad
fronds of the brake ; the golden red of his

RED DEER.

coat fits to the foxglove, the purple heather,
and later on to the orange and red of the
beech ; his easy bounding motion springs
from the elastic sward ; his limbs climb the
steep hill as if it were level ; his speed
covers the distances, and he goes from
place to place as the wind. He not only
lives in the wild, wild woods and moors —
he grows out of them, as the oak grows
from the ground. The noble stag in his
pride of antler is lord and monarch of all
the creatures left to us in English forests
and on English hills.

V.

WAYS OF RED DEER.

A STAG used to be called a "forester" in the
days when stag-hunting had fallen to a low
estate, and every one shot or poached the
wild deer as they chose. With so many
guns against them all over Exmoor and the
neighbouring districts, the red deer grew
scarce, and were not often seen. They were,
in fact, in some danger of extinction, being
treated as outlaws and killed in and out of
season. If any one sighted a stag, or found
the slot, he roused the country-side ; people
armed themselves with guns of every kind
and sallied forth to destroy it. If a stag was
shot, he was put into a cart and carried
through the place in triumph. Poachers

RED DEER.

followed the deer continually, and thinned
their numbers.

It happened once that a "forester" was
discovered in a certain district, and a party
was quickly formed to go out and shoot
the stag. Among those who went was a
man well known as a successful deer-shot,
upon whose good aim they chiefly relied.
They took with them a gallon of spirits.
After some time spent in searching for the
stag, and just as they were beginning to
weary of the attempt, up the " forester "
jumped close to the party. A volley was
fired — the muzzles almost touching the stag
— but the game went off at full speed.
The old gunner, however, declared that he
had hit the mark; he was sure he had
aimed straight. In a minute or two, as
they watched the stag bounding up the hill
a mile away, suddenly he dropped and lay
still, evidently dead. It was found after-

WAYS OF RED DEER. 103

wards that the ball from the old gunner's
weapon had grazed the stag's heart, and yet
with that wound he had run upwards of a
mile. No other bullet had struck him ; it
was a wonder where all the balls had gone
to, for the shooters were so close to each
other they narrowly escaped wounding them-
selves by the cross fire.

The party were so tired of walking after
the stag that they did not go at once to
ascertain if he was really dead, or to cut the
throat. They sat down in the heather to
refresh themselves with the spirits, and so
well did they do this that by-and-by the
old gunner fell firm asleep. Neither blows
nor shouts could rouse him, so in order to
wake him up they set fire to the heather,
little thinking of what they were doing.
Dry as tinder, the heather blazed up in such
a fury of flame that they fled aside to get
out of the way, leaving the sleeper to his fate.

104 RED DEER.

The flame passed over him as he lay, and
when the wind had driven it along they
found him in his burning clothes. They
could not put the burning clothes out, and
so carried him to the river and dipped him
in. He was terribly scorched and half
drowned, and was long ill, but ultimately
recovered. Though the heather burnt with
such ferocity the flame was quick, almost
like a flash of gunpowder, and was gone
over in a moment ; still it was a very
narrow escape from a dreadful death. The
thing was done in a frolic, but such frolics
are very dangerous. Many acres of heather
were burned, and considerable pecuniary
damage caused.

Now, it is the rarest thing to hear of a
stag being shot, or of any deer-poaching,
though the deer are so numerous and could
often be easily killed. They certainly were
shot from time to time later than the date

WAYS OF RED DEER. 105

of the above anecdote, generally by small
farmers into whose fields they had strayed
and committed serious damage. A farmer
who had shot a deer put the animal as
soon as possible into the salter out of sight.
There are people here and there still to be
found who have eaten poached venison, but
there is not one now to be found who will
confess to having shot a deer. So greatly
has popular opinion changed during the last
seven-and-twenty years on Exmoor that at
the present day were a man to shoot a stag
he would be utterly sent to Coventry. No
one would speak or deal with him or ac-
knowledge his existence. He would be
utterly cut off from society of every class,
not only the upper but the lower classes
being equally imbued with the sporting
feeling.

Nor, indeed, is there any possibility of
poaching. A stag is a large animal which

lo6 RED DEER.

cannot be put in a pocket like a hare, nor
cooked and eaten at once. The skin and
antlers, slot and head, are not to be easily
destroyed. No one would buy a stolen deer,
knowing the inevitable consequences ; and
as there are no receivers — as there are of
poached pheasants — there are no thieves.
Even the labouring classes have not the least
desire to destroy them ; on the contrary,
they know full well that the stag-hunting
is profitable to them, causing, as it does,
so much money to circulate in innumerable
ways. Without stag-hunting there would be
absolutely nothing doing about Exmoor — no
life, no movement — so that it proves of the
greatest value to all. The cottager, as well
as the sportsman, drinks the toast inscribed
on the silver buttons worn on the scarlet
coats of the hunt, " Prosperity to Stag-
Hunting."

Poaching, however, did not quite die out

WAYS OF RED DEER. 107

for some years, and if they were not very
good shots, still if the deer was but wounded
they would follow him up for days till they
got him. Some twelve years since a man
returned from the gold-diggings, and who
seems to have been an adventurous, not to
say desperate character, shot a stag, one out
of three lying in some heather not far from
his home. The horns till lately hung in the
cottage. The fact soon came to the know-
ledge of the harbourer, who hunted him, as
it were, by slot, till at last he captured
him, with the assistance of a police-constable,
in the highway. In his pockets they found a
gun taken to pieces for convenience of con-
cealment, a revolver, and a long bowie-knife.
This appears to have been the last case
of deliberate deer-stealing. If any have
occurred since, it has been rather casually
than by deliberate pursuit. Deer wandering
into fields held by small farmers have, it is

io8 RED DEER.

believed, been shot, but even this practice
has quite died out. At this hour a red stag
is perfectly safe from one side of Exmoor
to the other, no matter whether he may be
in the oak covers, on the heather, or eating
his fill in the wheat-fields. Of William the
Conqueror it was said that he loved the tall
deer as if he were their father ; the deer of
Exmoor have hundreds of such fathers, for
they are loved by every one. Red deer are
a passion with rich and poor. Farmers,
large and small, hunt and aid the hunt in
every possible manner, and besides those
who have horses numbers follow on foot.

Deer are extremely nervous at the sound
of a gun. A single report will drive them
all away, and as the echo rolls along the
wooded hills every stag will start. Those
whose orchards are entered by the deer
sometimes fire off a gun to drive them
away, the noise being sufficient. Though

WAYS OF RED DEER. 109

so timid in some ways, and especially by
day, the deer are not easily alarmed from
food that pleases them. If a man gets out
of bed and drives them out of the orchard
— their raids are generally made at night —
they will very soon return after he has re-
tired. In fact, it is almost impossible to
keep them out of places to which they
have taken a fancy.

There are some very large covers near
Porlock running along the coombes — alto-
gether nine miles of oak woods. Anywhere
else but on Exmoor, where everything is
on a large scale, and distance is the most
marked feature, nine miles of woods would
be called a forest. On Exmoor a forest is
only a cover. In these great covers the
deer have taken up their residence, and have
so increased that at last the damage they
have done has led to efforts being made to
force them out. Besides the injury to the

RED DEER.

adjacent crops, where so many deer are
gathered in one place, the stags destroy the
young firs in the plantations. Rubbing their
heads against the young trees to wear off
the velvet, their antlers not only bark the

trees but splinter the branches. The sap-
lings are thus completely broken to pieces,
and of course will not grow. The game-
keepers have deerhounds to hunt them out
of the covers, and yet even with these they

WAYS OF RED DEER.

find it impossible to drive the deer away.
Blank cartridges will have to be used; per-
haps even that will not be effectual. The
persistence with which the deer keep in
these great woods is inimical to the inte-
rests of the hunt.

When a meet takes place the stag will
not break cover, and hours are lost while
he runs to and fro in the wood. So many
stags herding together make it difficult to
single one out for a run, the hounds divide,
and the day is half gone before the chase
begins. Could the deer be got out of the
forest to live more in the heather on the
hills it would be an advantage. Damage to
the crops is more serious when concentrated
in a locality, and, of course, if a large herd
of deer remain in a wood they will feed
on whatever is nearest. But they are not
to be moved without difficulty ; they are
most capricious in their likes and dislikes,

112 RED DEER.

and have been compared in this respect to
moles. One day a mole-hill appears sud-
denly in a field ; another is immediately
thrown up, a third, a fourth, whole rows
of mole-hills ; nor can trapping exterminate
them. After awhile the moles go on, and
desert the place. Deer used to lie a great
deal at Slowby, and do not now so much.
Haddon Hill is a favourite locality ; yet in the
spring of the present year [1884] numbers of
them had gone across to Hawkridge. They
go where they like and stop where they like.
The damage they do to crops is so exten-
sive that without the goodwill of the farmers
stag-hunting could not last a single season.
Nothing could demonstrate more thoroughly
the enthusiasm which hunting the red deer
inspires in those who follow it than the
fact that the farmers over such an immense
breadth of country should unanimously agree
to endure these losses.

WAYS OF RED DEER. 113

Compensation is of course paid, but even
compensation may fail to recoup. Beyond
the loss of a crop there is the loss of the
fertilisation which would ensue from the
stock fed on it, and it is not always possible
in times of scarcity even with money to
purchase fodder. Three losses fall on the
farmer, whose crop is ruined. First, the
market value of the crop; next, the loss to
the ground of the fertilisation that would
have been obtained from its consumption ;
thirdly, the difficulty, perhaps impossibility,
of replacing the material destroyed. Loss
of time might be added, since another crop
cannot be grown till the season returns in
due course. Unhesitating goodwill alone
can explain the continuance of stag-hunting
under these risks ; unhesitating goodwill and
an enthusiasm not to be matched by that
aroused in any other sport. Only, indeed,
the noblest sport of all — the chase of the

114 RED DEER.

red deer — could excite a whole country to
such generous enthusiasm. Deer may be
said to eat as much as the small Devon
cattle which are kept in this part of Somer-
set; they feed sometimes with the bullocks
that are turned out on the moors.

They will have the best of everything, and
roaming about at night select the meadow
with the most succulent grass. They enter
orchards, too, in spring for the long grass
that grows between the apple-trees. Turnips
are a favourite food, and leaving the moors
they wander miles down into the cultivated
fields to find them. The stag as he walks
across the turnip field bites a turnip, draws
it from the ground, and throws it over his
shoulders, the jerk detaching the fragment
he holds between his teeth, and which is
the only portion he touches. He takes but
one bite at each turnip, casting the re-
mainder aside in this way, and his course

WAYS OF RED DEER. 115

can be traced from one side of the field to
the other by the turnips pulled and thrown
away after his snatch. In this disdainful
manner he damages far more than he actu-
ally eats. Hinds eat the turnip down into
the ground as a sheep would.

A herd of stags or hinds getting into a
turnip field will eat broad patches and paths
about it. If it is a small field they may
destroy every root, and many a farmer visit-
ing his field in the morning has found that
every turnip in it has been pulled up and
pitched aside by stags in the night. Of
potatoes, again, they are very fond, and get
at them by scraping away the earth with
their fore-feet, or slots, eagerly eating the
potatoes thus laid bare. Carrots attract
them — almost all animals are fond of carrots,
or carrot-tops. Cabbages please them ; they
will strip a garden of cabbages in no time
as clean as possible. It has been noticed

il6 RED DEER.

that barren hinds are the most addicted to
doing mischief in gardens. But perhaps
the greatest injury is done to wheat.

Stags visit the wheat fields at two seasons.
They come so soon as the green leaf shoots
up and nibble it, and are especially fond of
it just before the ear appears, when it is
full of succulent juices, and pleasant even
to a human palate. Any one who will pull
a green ear of wheat and crush the stalk
between the teeth will find it sweet to taste.
As it turns yellow and becomes drier, more
like straw, they leave it, but return again
when the ears are ripe. Immediately before
harvest they will go into a wheat field and
remain there day and night for a week
together. Eight or ten stags may herd in
a field and eat and destroy fifteen or twenty
pounds' worth before discovered. The wheat
fields are often far from the homesteads,
and not very frequently visited ; the stags

WAYS OF RED DEER. 117

lie down in the daytime, and the wheat,
then at its highest, hides them.

The colour of their red-gold coats shades
well with the ripe corn, and, unless their
antlers or their marks be seen, they may
be unnoticed if any one does pass. They
do not bite the ears of wheat off, but take
three or four straws at once in the mouth
and lift their heads, drawing the ears through
their teeth, and so stripping each ear as if
it had been threshed out standing. There
is not a grain left in the ear, and after
eight or ten stags have been at this work
for a few days it is easy to imagine what
a state the crop is left in. For such de-
predations heavy compensation is paid by
the hunt.

The deer are fond, too, of oats, and
eat them ripe in exactly the same way ;
oats strip easily when drawn through their
mouths. They will eat barley occasionally

Ii8 RED DEER.

if there is nothing else about, but not so
much ; the awn is troublesome to them.
They will get into rye-grass and damage it,
but very seldom touch a rick of hay. One
winter, when the ground was more than
usually bare, and there seemed absolutely
nothing for the sheep or ponies, a rick or
two of hay was pulled round the outside,
but this was exceptional. Stags jump so
well and are so bold that it is next to im-
possible to keep them out of anything they
fancy, and hinds climb over the highest
walls and fences. The beech hedges of the
country, as before described, grow on walls,
and are high and thick, but these are not
the least obstacle.

The farmers place stakes in the hedges,
and hang a vine of straw along from stake
to stake a foot or so above the top of the
hedge. A vine is a rope of twisted straw ;
this in itself would not for a moment resist

WAYS OF RED DEER. 119

the impact of a stag, but the rope is smeared
with tar, which they dislike and avoid. This
is a protection to some extent where it can
be done. In time, as the winter and winds
break down the straw rope, fragments of
it alone remain, drooping from the stakes
among the fresh green beech spray of the
spring. Wire is sometimes placed along
above flakes in the arable fields. Ingenious
scarecrows are put up ; the stags on enter-
ing the field quietly walk to the dummy
figure and sniff it contemptuously, as if they
were perfectly aware from the first of its
harmless character, and merely took that
trouble out of habitual precaution. Some
one tried high white gates to frighten them.
The first time one of the white gates was left
open the stags walked through.

Apples they are extremely fond of. They
enter an orchard at night and go through,
stripping every branch they can reach, and

120 RED DEER.

stags can reach high and clear boughs far-
ther up a tree than would be supposed.
They swallow the apples without biting
them, just take them from the branch and
swallow at once. Now and then when a
stag is killed and paunched, quantities of
apples drop out and roll about the ground,
the peel not so much as cracked ; the poorer
boys think nothing of eating these as they
find them fresh from the deer, without so
much as washing the apples, and what they
cannot eat they pocket for future enjoy-
ment. These are the principal things the
deer feed on in the cultivated fields. They
go far down into the valleys and plains
for the wheat. When the damage they do
is enumerated it is evident at once that
stag-hunting is a sport of the most fasci-
nating character, or such losses would not
be endured for a month.

On the moors the deer eat the fresh

WAYS OF RED DEER.

grass that springs after tracts are burned,
the tops of the heather, and the grass that
grows between the young firs in planta-
tions. They will eat the leaves of haw-
thorn and beech, and in the covers are said
to sometimes take oak leaves. Bramble
leaves they feed on both in summer and
winter, and are very fond of ivy, grazing on
quantities of the ivy growing along the
ground in the woods. Ivy will attract them
to a cover, and they grow fat on it. But
above all things they love acorns, and devour
immense quantities of them as they fall from
the trees. It is at the acorn time that the
stags are fattest ; if the crop of acorns hap-
pens to be plentiful they have a perfect feast.
Sprays of ash tempt them, the fresh leaf on
the young shoots that start up after the old
wood has been cut; they eat it off as level
as if cut with a bill-hook, stags especially.
The calves frisk and play about their mothers

RED DEER.

as they feed, and the grown deer are some-
times playful.

In summer they live well and find ample
food, but in winter are sometimes hard
pressed. They pick a little here and a
little yonder; it must, however, be a hard
time for them, especially when snow falls and
lies for weeks, as it will do on Exmoor when
there is none in the plain. These great dis-
tances covered with snow are desolate in the
extreme — white distances beneath and grey
sky over. The deer know when the snow is
coming — they leave the hills and descend into
the coombes, and lie there " under the wind,"
as the Exmoor phrase is. The shepherds see-
ing them come down recognise it as a sign
that snow is approaching. Snow tries them
while it lasts, and is an enemy as it thaws,
for in thawing snow the scent holds so well
and is so good that the hounds run it quick
as fire racing over the dry heather.

123

VI.

TRACKING DEER BY SLOT.

THE red deer come out of the covers to feed
at dusk, and continue feeding all night. At
dawn they return to the woods to stay there
during the day. A stag generally drinks
before entering the cover, and afterwards
" soils," that is, lies down and rolls in the
water. They have their regular " soiling-
pits " — watery places or shallow ponds —
which they visit for this purpose. In these
they extend themselves and splash and
thoroughly enjoy the coolness of the water.
All round these soiling-pits there are signs
of deer — their slot or footprints ; and as the
water is always shallow, the stag often covers
his sides with mud, which when he leaves

124 RED DEER.

the pond and goes into the wood is rubbed
off against the bushes.

His "bed" — the space he selects to lie in
for the day — is usually on the most level
piece of ground he can find in the copse.
He does not mind if it is a little damp, so
long as it is level. He merely lies down like
a bullock, and makes no nest as a fox will,
turning round and round till the grasses are
fitted to his body. But as the stag will lie in
the same place day after day, there is a de-
pression in the fern or grasses corresponding
to his size. When he has settled himself
down he is said to be " in harbour," and it is
curious that if once a stag has chosen a part of
the copse, the next that comes will generally
go and lie very near the same spot, though
the first stag may have left it weeks.

Hot summer weather makes a stag pant,
and it is often possible to hear him blowing
and knocking the flies off in the heat of

TRACKING DEER BY SLOT. 125

the day. Two or three times in the day
he gets up, goes a little way, and returns.
Sometimes he goes down to drink, but always
comes back to his "bed." Those stags that
frequent the hills in the height of the summer
often choose places where the wind draws
through a scanty plantation of trees near the
ridge of a hill. There are seldom any trees,
not even firs or bushes, on the heights of
Exmoor. The winter gales are so severe that
trees will not grow, though they nourish in
the coombes " under the wind," and up to
the very line of the wind. Stags seem in
summer to like the draught of air under
trees, and indeed are hot by nature, and
always glad to cool themselves, as in water.
The day being over, the stag at dusk comes
out again to feed.

Now the work of the "harbourer" is to
find where a runnable stag is in " harbour "
on the morning of the meet, that is, in what

126 RED DEER.

particular copse or part of a wood a stag
has gone to lie for the day, and where the
hounds will find him. It must be a runnable
stag, or warrantable, a term in its strict
meaning indicating a stag of five years, with
not less than two points on top at the upper
end of the antler. Occasionally a stag is
run at four years, but five is the right age.
The "harbourer" consequently has two main
questions to determine, and to determine
with absolute accuracy ; first, he has to
choose a stag of the proper age, and next
to fix on the exact spot where that stag will
be at a given time. The "harbourer" must
not say he "thinks" a stag is in such and
such a place, nor that he " thinks " he is
runnable. There are perhaps three hundred
gentlemen on horseback waiting eagerly for
the sport to begin ; the pack is shut up for
the moment in a farmyard, having travelled
over from the kennels ; the Master and the

TRACKING DEER BY SLOT. 127

huntsman are there ; and no one will brook
indecision. He has to bring an accurate re-
port, and must be positively sure. He must
not think ; he must know.

Some of the covers, as that at Haddon,
reach five miles of unbroken woodland, and
it may be imagined that these are no easy
questions to answer. The task is often
rendered more difficult by accidents of
weather, and the " harbourer " has further
this to contend against, that, as a rule, he
does not see the deer at all. If he can see
the deer they can generally see him ; their
movements then become uncertain, and they
cannot be depended upon. Left to them-
selves their habits are partly regular, so that
the harbourer endeavours to work unseen.
His procedure, in fact, exactly resembles the
method of an Indian in the forests of America
following the trail of buffalo or deer. Feats
of this kind described in books of travel

128 RED DEER.

always excite interest and admiration ; but
the very same thing is done at home in the
woods about Exmoor.

Every animal as it goes leaves the imprint
of its hoofs upon the ground ; the imprint
of the deer's hoof is called the slot, and it
is by the slot that the stag is tracked to his
harbour. By the slot, too, his age is known,
the time at which he travelled along the
path, and the pace at which he was going
— fast or slow. In general shape the slot of
deer resembles the marks left by sheep, but
is much larger, longer, and wider. The slot
of a stag is at once distinguished from that
of a hind by its greater proportionate size,
and by each half being longer and more
pointed. There is a ridge between the two
halves of the hoof mark ; the two halves of
the hoof opening somewhat let the soft earth
rise up between them. Each half is narrower
and elongated and well separated. That of

TRACKING DEER BY SLOT. 129

the hind, in comparison, has little or no
ridge between, or the ridge is very thin, the
slot is not so long, and the outline somewhat
heart-shaped.

The broad, rounded end of the slot is the
heel, and the points point in the direction
the animal was moving. With age the size
and length of the slot varies ; that of a
yearling is less than that of one two years
old, and a full-grown stag of course leaves
the largest mark. Practice renders these as
quickly distinguished as the capital letters
and ordinary type of printing, so that the
harbourer knows at a glance how old the
stag or hind was. As the stag grows older
the heel becomes broader, and as he steps
the points of the hoof separate farther, till at
five years — when a runnable stag — the marks
are wide apart. This enlargement goes on
up to six years, and up to that age the har-
bourer can tell the age with precision. After

I

130 RED DEER.

six there is no further increase, and the age
cannot be distinguished, but as the stag is
then certainly runnable it does not matter.

The opening of the hoof of the stag is
remarkable ; as he goes his hoof divides like
fingers stretched apart. The stretching of the
hoof depends in degree upon the pace the
stag was going. If walking the hoof remains
in its normal state ; trotting opens it con-
siderably, and when galloping the two halves
are widest apart. By the width of the im-
pression the speed is consequently indicated ;
but this varying breadth would confuse the
harbourer's judgment of the age of the stag
were it not for one particular.

One part of the stag's slot never varies in
breadth, whether he is walking or galloping
at his hardest; and this is the heel. The
points spread ; the heel remains the same
size. To understand this, place your hand
on the table, palm downwards. The back

TRACKING DEER BY SLOT. 131

of the hand across the knuckles represents
the heel of the slot and the fingers the
points. Whether the fingers are kept close
together or spread apart as widely as pos-
sible the back of the hand or heel measures
the same across. Corresponding to the age
and size of the stag is the breadth of his
heel, and it is to that part of the slot that
the harbourer looks to assure himself that
it is a runnable deer.

The pace at which the stag was travelling
is further shown by the depth of the im-
pression. In walking his hoofs sink in but
slightly ; in galloping they strike the earth
with great force and often enter deeply,
slipping forward, too, aslant underneath the
surface. Lastly, the time at which he
passed a given spot is known by the fresh-
ness of the slot, and the harbourer can tell
if he went by recently — some hours, a day,
or two days since. If recently, the slot is

132 RED DEER.

sharply marked, and the soil has had no
time to crumble if sand, or crack if clay.
The bottom of the mark is often moist,
compared with the general surface of the
ground, for when the general surface is dry
it is damp half an inch under. Moistness
shows that the impression has not had time
to dry.

Till now it has been assumed that the
earth always takes a perfect impression like
wax ; but in reality the contrary is the
case, and the difficulty of precisely deter-
mining the age of the stag is increased by
the uncertainty of the material on which
the impression is left. Deer paths often
pass through heather, and they walk on the
dry stems trodden down ; these take no
mark at all. Nor is there slot where fern
abounds, nor on the loose stones which
cover so many acres of Red Deer Land. In
sand the slot is sometimes almost perfect —

TRACKING DEER BY SLOT. 133

the sand gives a perfect mould of the stag's
hoof, into which if plaster were poured a
good copy would be obtained. But if the
sand has not the right degree of moisture
it spreads, and the marks look larger than
they should. In moist, clay-like earth the
slot, too, is good, and just at the edge of
water.

Weather interferes with slot, especially
heavy rain, which washes it out ; nor is
continued drought and heat advantageous,
as the earth becomes so firm it will not
yield. A slight shower is best; in fact, the
harbourer likes the ground prepared for
him, much the same as those who cast pre-
pare their earth for moulding. In judging
whether the marks are recent or not, the
state of the weather must especially be
borne in mind. The right meaning of these
minutiae is not of course to be learned with-
out long and constant practice ; a guinea

134 RED DEER.

is paid for each stag " harboured" suc-
cessfully. The work commences early in
August, when it is usually hot and dry.
Towards the end of July the harbourer
begins to look round after the stags and
notice their whereabouts. They are then
fraying, rubbing the velvet off their new
horns against the trees. He observes where
the signs of fraying first appear, indicating
that a full-grown stag is in the neighbour-
hood, as the best stags usually fray earliest.
They like the soft-barked trees most to
fray against, and are particularly fond of
willow. The harbourer looks at starting for
the willows, and next to these for moun-
tain-ashes ; in the Exmoor country the
mountain-ash is called the quick -beam.
Both willow and quick-beam are frequently
stripped of their bark; the stag pushes his
head against the tree and rubs his antlers,
which are now as hard as ivory, up and

TRACKING DEER BY SLOT. 135

down. A willow or quick-beam not being
handy, he will attack a fir. Next season
you may see such a fir, which was used as
a fraying post, dead and dry, the bark
having been completely stripped from it —
ringed — up to about the height of one's
chest. Deep parallel indentations score the
hard wood where the points of the antlers
have grooved it, as if with an iron instru-
ment, and in these grooves hair still ad-
heres. Numbers of such firs thus destroyed
are cut down for firewood ; now and then
one survives, not being quite ringed, and
lives with wide gaps in its bark. Such
softer woods as that of the mountain-ash
are not only barked but broken.

A meet being fixed, the harbourer goes
over to the district on the previous day. In
the afternoon he starts for the covers or
likely places, and if he meets a labourer or
others in the field inquires if any of the

136 RED DEER.

hedges were cut in the spring. To these
hedges he goes and looks for the fresh ash
shoots which have sprung up since the
hedge was cut. These are sure to be eaten
off if a stag is about — sometimes a stag will
go up a hedge a hundred yards, eating every
fresh spray of ash along it. Next he goes to
the gaps, or any place of entry into the covers,
and looks for slot. He walks round the
cover, examining every path and 'any moist
spot he can find. If there is no runnable
deer in one cover he goes on to the next,
till he discovers indications that a full-grown
stag is there. He then considers the condi-
tion of the slot, and if the ground is dry
"douts" it by drawing his foot over — that
is, he obliterates it. The object is, that next
time he comes the slot may be new, well-
defined, and perfectly fresh, so as to prevent
the possibility of mistake as to the freshness
of the trail. This part of the work he

TRACKING DEER BY SLOT. 137

finishes by six in the evening, and then
quits the fields for his home or inn.

He has now got a general knowledge that
a stag is there ; but he has still to convince
himself by a second observation that the stag
will be in his harbour next day when the
hounds are brought; for during the inter-
vening night the stag will go out to feed,
and may chance not to return. He now
hopes that a slight shower may fall and cease
before one o'clock in the morning, to moisten
the surface, and so give good impressions.
He dreads most a heavy downpour after
dawn, which may wash out almost every
trace. A slight shower is so useful that he
can harbour at once ; if it is very dry
weather it may take half an hour to examine
a single field.

The stag goes to his harbour directly it
is light, and soon after dawn the harbourer
starts for his second and final round. If the

138 RED DEER.

cover is small he does not approach it till
he thinks the stag has had time to lie down
and settle himself in his " bed," because if
the stag should be still standing up and
"wind" him, i.e., catch scent of him, he
would very likely move on to another copse ;
but when once settled down the stag would
not shift his quarters for so little disturbance
as that. With a large wood no such care is
necessary, and the harbourer need not wait
for the stag to settle. First he has to
ascertain that the stag has actually returned
to harbour in the same place ; and for this
purpose he visits the spot where he saw the
slot on the previous afternoon. Should there
be a soiling-pit or shallow pond, he goes to
that, and notes the marks in the mud ; or
if he " douted " the slot, he looks to see if
any fresh impressions have been formed.
Dew assists him in the search. When he
has discovered the slot of the stag he tracks

TRACKING DEER BY SLOT. 139

it into the copse or cover, and satisfies him-
self that he has entered it. The stag being
tracked in, the next thing is to be certain
that he has not come out again, and to know
this the harbourer goes round the copse,
carefully examining every possible place
of exit.

Frequently there are roads or lanes at
one side ; he looks at the dust, which will
take a good impression. Instead of going
several miles round the large woods, he walks
up the shooting paths, or drives, and so finds
if the stag has crossed them. There being
no slot across these paths and none at the
places of exit, it is clear that the stag must
be in the copse, and that he has gone to lie
down in his former bed. He is now har-
boured ; and the harbourer, certain of his
game, hastens to his home or inn for break-
fast, and immediately afterwards rides to
the meet to give his report to the huntsman.

143 RED DEER.

Unless he be disturbed, the stag is almost
sure to remain in harbour, but it has once
now and then happened that he has moved
to an adjacent wood. Sometimes a watcher
is left to see if this occurs or not; but as
a rule, once harboured, the stag is safe in
hand.

At the meet the pack is now waiting shut
up in a farmyard ; so soon as the harbourer
comes, the huntsman takes out six or eight
couples of hounds to draw the cover, leaving
the rest of the pack still confined. The
hounds selected to draw the wood are called
the " tufters," and are old, staunch, and
steady ; drawing the cover is called " tuft-
ing." At the wood, if the stag has entered
up-wind, the huntsman must tuft up-wind —
that is, let the hounds go in with the breeze
in their faces. If possible, the harbourer
takes the huntsman to the actual slot where
the stag entered the wood, and the hounds,

'TUFTERS."

TRACKING DEER BY SLOT. 143

or " tufters," are put at once on the trail ;
this is "feathering." The harbourer likes
to " feather " — to set the hounds direct on
the trail.

When that is difficult the tufters work
the wood up the wind, which carries the
scent of the deer down towards them ; a
hound will sometimes throw up his head,
having caught the scent, a hundred yards
before getting to the place where the stag
is lying. But even when they have the
scent the tufting is often only begun. A
stag, if he finds that only one or two hounds
are approaching his " bed," will sometimes
refuse to move ; he will face them with his
antlers, and rather than run in upon these
weapons, the hounds will pass him and seek
another. Though pressed by all the tufters,
the stag will seldom break cover at once, but
resorts to every artifice rather than leave
it. He leads them to and fro the wood ;

144 RED DEER.

the huntsman and harbourer follow as best
they may on horseback, and often find
it rude riding, as the boughs are wet with
dew.

A runnable stag always has a younger
companion with him, who feeds with him,
accompanies him, and lies near him in cover.
The two are always together, inseparable ;
the younger one is not of age to be called
a stag, but is said to be a young male deer,
or, in the ancient language of the chase, a
brocke or brocket. When the full-grown stag
finds that the hounds, or tufters, are really
following him up and down, he turns on his
friend and companion, and by might of antlers
forces the young deer to take his place, and
break cover for him. This occurs almost
invariably — to cast the hounds off from pur-
suing him, the stag drives out his friend that
he may be hunted in his place. Failing in
this, if the tufters return, and are not drawn

TRACKING DEER BY SLOT. 145

off after his friend, the stag will by turns
attack every other stag in the wood that he
can master, and force them one by one to
break cover, hoping that the hounds may
forget him and pursue them. Yet more
desperate, he will presently drive out the
hinds in order to avert his fate.

Huntsman and harbourer ride to and fro
as best they may ; they know what the tufters
have roused by the sound. A hind steals
away silently ; a stag makes a great noise
with his antlers against the branches. They
do not ride together, but apart, and cannot see
each other ; but the harbourer is aware what
the huntsman has seen, or is doing, by the
varying sounds of his horn. Holding the horn
to the side of his mouth, the huntsman gives
short, quick notes if a stag is up and away
before him. If either of them has reason
to suppose that the stag has gone, from the
noise in the bushes, he shouts " Forwards ! "

146 RED DEER.

This is a signal to ride to the edge of the
wood to see what it is that breaks cover;
a runnable stag generally leaves by known
paths, paths which he uses at other times,
so that it is to these places they ride to
watch. When one of them sees the right
stag break cover he shouts — " Tally ho ! "
Reckless in his haste, the stag does not
heed anything in front, and if his path leads
through a crowd, as occasionally happens,
sometimes knocks over one or two people,
not intentionally, nor causing injury, but
rolling them aside in eagerness to reach the
open country.

147

VII.

THE HUNTED STAG.

RED DEER are hunted in so different a
manner to other animals, that the term
hunting scarcely conveys an idea of what
takes place. It is a chase, not a hunt in
the sense that the fox or the hare is hunted ;
a chase which has three stages. There is
first the " harbouring," which is finding the
deer ; next the " tufting," which is driving
him out of the wood with a few selected
hounds ; and thirdly, the chase proper, when
the pack is laid on. The tufting may occupy
only a short time, or it may last an hour or
more if the wood is large, and the stag
determined not to come out.

Immediately he has gone away the tufters

148 RED DEER.

are whipped off, so that until the pack is
brought up, the stag is not pursued. He
has thus a considerable start, and it has
happened that an hour has elapsed before
the pack could be put on, and yet the stag
has been taken. The tufters are whipped off
carefully, for if a single hound should escape
and pursue he will deaden the scent by run-
ning it, and the pack cannot follow so freely.
Until the pack comes there is often some
waiting about, but when once they are laid
on there is a change. If the scent lies well
the pace is soon hot, and the country such
as tries all but the experienced. A stag goes
straight, and has been known to run twenty-
five miles ahead.

The elevated table-land of Exmoor is
grooved in all directions by deep and steep
coombes, or valleys. The side of a coombe
towards the bottom becomes rocky, and is
often strewn with loose red stones, which

THE HUNTED STAG. 149

chink under a horse's hoofs, and slip and
slide downwards. Paths are narrow, and
nothing but furrows in the stones and rocky
fragments. Very good sportsmen fresh to
the country frequently hesitate to ride down,
not so much on their own account, as that
of their horses, unused to such footing. It
is observed, indeed, that the fast hunters of
other countries are not so good for riding in
Red Deer Land as a stouter, more cob-like,
and less valuable horse. At the bottom of
the coombe a stream of water always flows,
sometimes only a rivulet, sometimes a wide
brook, but usually rocky, and awkward to
cross. The climb on the opposite side is
equally steep, so that a light-built fast
horse is soon beaten. Through many of
these coombes, which are in effect narrow
valleys, there is no riding at all except
by certain paths, so that it is necessary
either to have a full knowledge of the

150 RED DEER.

country, or to closely follow those who do
know it.

The huntsman who has been riding these
mountain-like paths for twenty-seven years
thinks that the best plan is to keep a horse
rattling along, to let him go, and not to
check or interfere with him. So long as he
is rattled along a horse will seldom stumble ;
he has had but one bad fall in all that time,
and has never been injured. His mare, it is
supposed, crossed her legs going up hill,
curiously enough, and threw him with his
head against one of the stones. His stout
cap saved him. With this exception he has
had no accident, an experience which would
seem to show that with a horse suited to the
ground and accustomed to it, the danger is
less than it looks. But the horse should be
suitable, and accustomed to the ground if
the rider intends to follow closely on the
hounds.

THE HUNTED STAG. 151

On surmounting the coombe-side there are
miles of heather, and often fair, level going ;
the walls occasionally are difficult, but the
risk is from the peaty places. Even in
summer these cause frequent falls, the
horse's fore-feet sink, and the jerk of the
sudden stoppage throws the rider, on soft
peat, however, so that it is rare for him to
be hurt. These places are avoided by those
who know the country — the rough grasses,
sedges, and white cotton-grass giving them
warning. After a stretch of such moorland
may come a ridge of hills, often rough.
Dunkery, for instance, which is the highest,
is covered with large stones. The larger
valleys have rivers at the bottom, which are
often difficult to cross. The contour of the
country is such that by judiciously moving
from point to point, instead of following the
trail, it is possible to watch the hunt for
miles without any trouble ; and, on the

152 RED DEER.

other hand, if any one likes he can have as
much hard and dangerous riding as he
pleases.

It is often remarked by those who watch
the hunt from the hill-tops that the pace
seems slow. This is an illusion caused by
the vast expanse of country which the eye
overlooks. There being few hedges, and no
trees in sight, and the elevation varying
from twelve to seventeen hundred feet, the
glance runs over twenty miles in a second.
Hounds and scarlet coats seem to toil slowly,
moving in the midst of this immensity, as
it takes them a long time to cover the space
which the eye grasps instantaneously. The
pace is really sharp, varying of course with
the stag's condition. They are sometimes so
fat from feeding on ripe wheat they cannot
get up speed — at another time they go like
the wind ; much, too, depends on the age.

At the opening of the season the general

THE HUNTED STAG. 153

hunting is not so good as it becomes in a
week or two. The velvet is scarcely off
some of the stags' antlers (they cannot run
far while in velvet) ; the pack is not settled
down to its work, at least the young hounds
have not, the ground is hot, and the heather
sometimes cuts their feet. As the season
advances the hunting improves and the pace
increases, so that those who desire to see it
in its glory should not go down for a week
or two. Besides hurting their feet on the
wiry heather, hounds cut them on rocks,
and are occasionally stung by adders. A
stag usually goes straight away, then finding
that speed and distance will not throw off
his pursuers, he tries art, next he courses
round, and often returns to bay and is killed
near the spot whence he started. He always
stands at bay in water, a river, or stream,
and very often swims out to sea.

As he breaks from cover, a stag has his

154 RED DEER.

mouth open, blows a little, and lolls his
tongue ; sometimes his tongue lolls out a
long way. In half an hour or so he gets his
" wind," then he draws in his tongue, shuts
his mouth, and keeps it tightly closed to
the end, while his nostrils are widely open.
He shows no outward sign of perspiration :
he does not "turn a hair," or lather; and,
however much he may get in water, his coat
never seems wet — that is, saturated. Wet
does not adhere, as if the coat were oily.

He goes direct at the thickest bushes, if
he comes to a hedge ; or, if it is a wall, to
the highest part, leaps on the top, and then
over. Now and then he will fly the wall at
a single leap. He will take places a man
can scarcely climb, always seeming to choose
the most difficult. Once now and then he
will leap gates, but generally goes through
the hedge or over the wall. If it should be
a gate, or hurdles, he goes up close to it till

THE HUNTED STAG. 155

almost touching, and then jumps. If he
can find another stag that he can master, he
will drive him up so that the hounds may
follow him, and lie down in the other's
" bed," holding his breath so that the hounds
shall not scent him, for the scent lies chiefly
in the breath.

The huntsman saw a stag leap up some
height from the path, drive another out, and
lie down himself in the furze. The stag
thus roused took the first stag's place so
completely, that the hounds went on with-
out a check, passing close to, and under the
first stag. Had not the huntsman seen it,
it would not have been known. He called
the hounds back, and restarted the first stag,
so that had it not been for the man the stag
would have beaten the hounds. Indeed, it
would seem as if this would often be the
case did not the intelligence of man come
to their aid.

156 RED DEER.

The stag sometimes runs in among a
number of bullocks feeding to throw the
hounds off the scent. At ordinary times
bullocks do not notice stags who feed by
them in the night, but when pursued in the
day, directly the stag approaches they set
off at a gallop, and by keeping amongst
them the stag confuses the hounds. Heated
and weary, the stag now makes for a pond
or brook, and on reaching it, drinks first,
and then "soils" — that is, lies down, and
rolls and splashes, making the water fly
about. Cooled and refreshed, he starts
again with renewed vigour, but still the
tireless hounds follow, and at last he takes
to the river. The water baffles the hounds,
who lose scent in it; but here the intelli-
gence of man comes to their aid ; he puts
them in the way to find it, and the end is
now coming fast.

No more able to run, the hunted stag

The hunted stag stands at bay in the river."— Page, 159.

THE HUNTED STAG. 159

stands at bay in the river, choosing a place
so deep that the hounds must swim to
reach him, while he is firm on his feet.
Though they swarm about him, if the water
is deep enough he can keep them at bay
with his antlers for a time ; but they are
too numerous. His strength decreases as
their eagerness increases, for they attack
him for his flesh ; they hunt not only for
the joy of the chase, but the savage flavour
of blood. Hounds that have not before
seen a stag at bay rush in, and are received
on the terrible brow-points.

After delivering a blow with his antlers,
the stag holds his head high up, his large
eyes straining down on the hounds, and
his mouth shut. They swarm upon him,
and weary him out, pulling him down at
last by his legs, and he falls with his legs
under him as a bullock lies. The hounds
are whipped off, or they would tear him to

160 RED DEER.

pieces — their teeth marks are generally left
in the skin — and the huntsman comes to
kill him. But first, even now, his antlers
must be secured, for they turn furiously to-
wards all who approach, and he can kick
as hard as a pony. There is a lasso, or
headline, kept for the purpose, and sup-
posed to be carried with the hunt; but it
often happens that it is not at hand when
wanted. One or two of the most experi-
enced present run in, the thong of a whip
is twisted round the antlers, and the head
drawn back as far as possible, so as to
stretch and expose the neck.

Instantly the huntsman thrusts his knife
with a quick deep stab — the deer gives a
convulsive throb and start, and dies instan-
taneously. The neck of a stag is covered
for some way down from the head with
rougher, shaggier hair than the rest of the
skin. It is just where this rough hair

THE HUNTED STAG. 161

ceases that the stab is given. Until within
the last few years the huntsman used to
cut the throat across, high up under the
chin, when there was much blood, which
the present way does not cause. If any
fresh sportsman is in at the death his face
is "blooded," and there is often a scramble
for trophies, as the slot, or hoofs, tufts of
hair torn from the skin, or the tusks. The
teeth polish well, and are set in scarfpins;
the slots are often silver-mounted as the
base of candlesticks.

The eager hounds have the paunch at
once ; the dead stag is then placed in a cart
and taken to the nearest farmhouse, where
the farmer usually skins it the same day, the
skin coming off better if it is done directly.
Next day the huntsman comes and cuts
up the carcase into twelve pieces (a hind
makes eight), and distributes these among
the farmers round. The kidney, as a deli-

162 RED DEER.

cacy, is generally taken by some old and
staunch sportsman. Head and horns are
the property of the Master of the Hunt ;
only a part of the skull is kept without the
skin, for it is found that heads preserved
with the skin on are soon infested by moths
and spoiled. Moths cannot be prevented
from injuring them. The skin is the hunts-
man's ; he has it prepared, and skins can
occasionally be obtained from him at a
guinea for a stag's, or fifteen shillings for a
hind's. A stag's skin has the finest colour,
but the hind's has a closer hair, and is better
as a skin. Such skins should be well shaken
from time to time to keep moth from them.

The weight of a stag varies : twelve score
is a good weight; some are not more than
nine, but the huntsman has killed at four-
teen score, or 280 pounds. He makes it a
rule to stick the deer personally, in order
that it may always be done expeditiously,

THE HUNTED STAG. 163

and to avoid unnecessary pain. Another
reason is, that he may be sure the stag is
old enough to be killed. The lasso supposed
to be used is precisely the same as that em-
ployed in America. On one occasion it was
thrown by a gentleman who had lassoed
animals there. A headline, however, is only
required when the stag cannot be approached,
as when he chances to be in an enclosure ;
generally the thong of a whip is sufficient.

But a hunted stag does not always come
to bay in this manner; he often makes for
the sea, and swims straight out, followed
by the hounds, leaving the hunters on the
beach. So common is this, that the hounds,
when hunting is not going on, are taken
down for exercise to the sea-shore, not only
for a bath, but that they may be used to
it. Stags swim splendidly for long dis-
tances, and can generally beat the hounds
in the water. They have a great advantage

164 RED DEER.

over hounds — they can rest and float. They
are so buoyant that they can cease striking
with their hoofs and yet remain with their
heads above the surface. Floating like this,
they rest and gather strength, while a hound
must continue using his feet, or drown.

Though the waves be high, the stag
breasts them easily, and sometimes swims
so far as to be scarcely visible. After a while
the hounds generally return to the beach if
they find they cannot head the stag and turn
him. Once now and then a hound over-
taxes himself, or is buffeted too much by
the waves, and sinks, but not often. The
stags usually take to the sea in the neigh-
bourhood of Porlock Weir, and the boatmen
are always on the watch when they know
the hunt is up.

Four or five fishermen are despatched for
the stag, and they row after him, helping
any hounds they may see getting exhausted

THE HUNTED STAG. 165

into the boat. They throw a rope round the
stag's antlers, and draw him on board, and
immediately tie his legs. A stag seems an
awkward animal to get into a boat, but they
manage it without much difficulty, and bring
him ashore to be killed. The huntsman, as
before observed, always kills, that he may
be sure it is a warrantable deer of proper
age ; if it proves not to be mature, the stag
is let go. Stags have been lost at sea, and
their bodies washed ashore at Cardiff or
Swansea, on the opposite coast, drowned
after a long combat with the waves. How
far a stag would swim if he started fresh,
without being wearied from a long run, is
uncertain, but certainly he could get over
a great distance.

The boatmen receive a guinea for bring-
ing in a stag, and half a guinea for a hind.
A hound named " Credulous " swam after
a stag, seized him by the ear, and, partly

166 RED DEER.

mounted on the stag's back, was drawn
along a considerable way, sometimes press-
ing the stag's head under water. " Credu-
lous" in one season was twice struck by
antlers, once in the breast, and again in
the hip, and yet he ran as staunchly as
ever. It is thought that the stags in the
woods by the sea swim sometimes in it for
their pleasure at night. They do in fresh
water, bathing in a pool, if they can find
one, in the evening as they come out of cover
before they feed. Water is a passion with
them. The brook, the mere streamlet, the
pond, or " soiling-pit," the river, or the sea
itself, it is always the water, as their friend,
and last resource. By day, if possible, they
lie near a streamlet, and drink always the
purest water ; they visit ponds or brooks as
they run, and come in the end to the sea.

Chasing the red stag requires much endu-
rance on the part of hounds and huntsman.

THE HUNTED STAG. 167

They first have to travel to the meet, then
there is the tufting or drawing the cover,
next the chase itself, frequently after that
the hounds swim out to sea; and finally,
after all is over, they have miles to return
to their kennels. The huntsman, who is
sixty-seven, often rides a hundred miles in
a day, of course with two horses ; he is in
the saddle ten, twelve, and even fourteen
hours. His longest rides occur in the hind-
hunting season, but the work in the stag-
hunting season is often as trying on account
of the heat. So great a labour does the
chase of the red deer entail, and so great a
physical endurance does it demand ! But
those who do not desire to labour so hard
can see much of the run without any special
stress of riding by keeping to the upper
ground, and crossing the chord of the arc
which the stag travels.

He usually runs in a circle towards the

168 RED DEER.

close, and the hunt can be intercepted by
crossing it. Stags in particular districts
have their favourite routes, and generally
take the same line ; so much is this the
case, that, the meet being fixed, an old
sportsman can predict the course the stag
will probably follow, and even the time the
hounds will return to kennel. There are
now, however, so many outlying deer, and
the deer-country has become so extended of
recent years, that it is difficult to say what
line a stag may take when the meet is
outside the ancient limits. It is supposed
that a stag takes the course he has been
accustomed to follow at night.

He almost always starts on a well-known
path, and follows it for some distance, and
his after-course depends upon his individual
knowledge of the country. The hounds fre-
quently force stags into districts with which
they are unacquainted, and the huntsman

THE HUNTED STAG. 169

is aware by the way the stag runs if he is
in known or new ground. In the rutting
season — October — stags travel afar, and when
chased next year are thought to sometimes
follow the paths they then found out. Stags
are run occasionally from Dunkery to the
Quantock Hills across a wide belt of culti-
vated country, probably having visited the
Quantocks in the rutting time. Upon the
Quantocks there is a herd of red deer kept
in an enclosed park.

Before now the wild hunted deer has
passed right through this park herd, but
the hounds, though the park-kept deer were
around them and visible, did not quit the
original scent, following their quarry, and
taking it. The power of scent of hounds is
very great ; they will follow a stag through
hinds, or, in the hind season, a hind through
stags, without losing the original trail. Some
think that the deer have observed that they

170 RED DEER.

are hunted at two different seasons, and that
the stags in the hind season do but just
move out of the way of the pack, while in
the stag season the hinds step aside and let
the chase go by without sign of alarm.

Once now and then it happens that a
stag hard pressed leaps from the rocks into
the sea. Pursued and hopeless of escape,
when he finds that speed cannot distance
the hounds, he returns circling towards the
crags which overhang the Channel. The
paths are narrow, the precipices deep, and
the walls of rock steep, so that if he chances
to follow a path among them he cannot
choose but go forwards ; the hounds behind
bar retreat. There is no turning back, and,
wild and desperate in his haste, he leaps
from the edge of the chasm, or perhaps is
in space before he knows where he is
going.

The nearest hound often follows, and once

THE HUNTED STAG. 171

it was observed that a hound which came
up some time after the stag had gone over
deliberately leaped after him. In this case
neither stag nor hound was seen again. The
tide at the moment was rushing in and the
waves large — the tide rises high here — and,
maimed by their fall on the rocks, stag and
hound were washed down by the under-tow.

To be runnable or warrantable, a stag in
strictness must answer to these two require-
ments : he must be five years old, and he
must bear his " rights " (that is, brow, bay,
and tray), and two on top. He is then a
stag in the full sense, and in every way fit
for the chase.

The points on top are sometimes exceeded,
and a stag at five years may have three on
top both horns, or three one side, and two
the other. But when a stag of five years
carries three on top, one of his " rights " —
the bay, or second point — is generally miss-

172 RED DEER.

ing from the antler on the side the three
are carried. If there are three on top both
sides then the bay point is missing from both
antlers. The number of points, too, some-
what depends upon the time of year at
which the calf was dropped ; if dropped late
in the year (as happens now and then) at
five years the stag would carry one point
less than another born very early in the
spring.

These facts are not only known from ob-
servation, but have been substantiated by
experiment Captured calves have been ear-
marked, and the marks found several seasons
afterward, so that the condition of the
antlers at a given age has been accurately
ascertained. The horns of those stags that
lie and feed in more enclosed places, where
the food is abundant, have the beam thicker
than it appears on the heads of those that
lie on the moors. When six years old a

THE HUNTED STAG. 173

stag has his " rights," and three on top one
or both sides.

At four years a male deer is occasionally
considered a stag and runnable, if he is
heavy, and carries two on top both horns,
and may be chased if no other is to be
found, but the proper age is five. At four
years a male deer bears brow, tray, and
two on top (without bay, and therefore
not with full " rights ") ; sometimes only
brow, and tray, and two on top one side,
and upright the other; upright indicates
that the antler terminates in one point at
the top. These points they sometimes carry
at three years, but at three are only
reckoned to bear brow, tray, and uprights
both sides.

In writing these differences appear minute,
but in reality they are marked, and those
who have had practice have not the least
difficulty in distinguishing the various con-

174 RED DEER.

ditions of the antlers, and deducing from
these the age of the deer.

Such are the points and definition of a
warrantable stag as understood at the present
day on Exmoor. They do not quite corre-
spond in every particular with the statements
in ancient books of venery or hunting as to
the signs of a runnable deer, and the gradual
enlargement of the antlers year by year.
The divergence is probably due to the pecu-
liar nature of the country where the red deer
are now alone found wild in England, and
which, as already explained, is singularly
exposed and cold in winter. Even there a
difference is observed between the horns of
the stags feeding in enclosed ground and
those that lie in the North Forest; that is,
on the highest moors. The ancient writers,
recording the experience of their own times,
when there were wild deer in every part,
referred to the growth of antlers in England

THE HUNTED STAG. 175

at large, and not in one district only. Some
of these books, too, seem to contain evidence
that the contents were partially transcribed
from a work originally written in Norman-
French, and probably in France, where deer
may develop their horns in a slightly dif-
ferent sequence. Norman-French may still
be continually traced in hunting terms ; the
word " soil," for instance, which is said of a
stag bathing, was anciently written soule.

176 RED DEER.

VIII.

HIND-HUNTING.

IT is a remarkable fact that hinds run longer
than stags. A hind will sometimes run for
five hours before the hounds ; how many
miles she will cover in that time it is difficult
to estimate, but the pace is very rapid, and
it cannot be much less than fifty, when the
doublings are reckoned. One thing in favour
of the hind is the season ; hinds are hunted
in cold weather, and stags in warm — when
too the stags are fat. Still the fact remains
that the female is stronger, and will run
longer than the male deer. There is no
" harbouring " in hind-hunting ; the informa-
tion where hinds are to be found is brought
to the huntsman by the gamekeepers of the

HIND-HUNTING. 177

district where the meet is. In the short days
the huntsman often begins his work at nine
in the morning.

When a hind has been found, and the
hounds are following, she not only depends
on speed, but gives every possible trouble
by doubling. She will go round and round
a field, like an old hare, and then leave
it by a great leap to foil them. At these
breaks of the scent the hounds are checked,
and sometimes the young hounds will begin
to run it back the wrong way ; they are
then said to "hunt heel." The ancient term
was to "hunt counter," a term constantly
found in old books and plays to express
the sense of travelling with the back to the
object sought. The hounds are then follow-
ing the " heel " of the deer. Older hounds on
coming to a check, when they lose the scent,
cast round, that is, make a small circle till they
find it again, and some are very clever at this.

178 RED DEER.

Sometimes if the snow is deep — not thaw-
ing— a hound will thrust his nose into the
slot of the deer as if to question it. The
hind gives the real hard work of hunting,
not only going as fast as she can, but giving
every possible difficulty. If she discovers
that her doublings are of no avail, she tries
to circle round and enter the herd of hinds
from which she was detached. By getting
among them she may perhaps throw the
hounds off her scent on to that of another
hind. Should they miss her in this way, and
take another, they never follow the second
with such goodwill. But if she cannot throw
them off, then, like the stag, she presently
makes for water, and enters the nearest river.

Water carries no scent, so that the hounds
on reaching the bank lose it. Young hounds
in such circumstances often stop altogether,
until they have been taught. The huntsman
on coming up judges which direction the

HIND-HUNTING. 179

deer has taken by the point for which she
was making. He sends part of the pack
across the water, so that the hounds are on
both sides, and run along the banks, fre-
quently entering and swimming out to the
rocks, of which the rivers of Exmoor — Barle
and Exe — are full. The tops, of the rocks
are often above the surface, and at these they
sniff, lest the deer should have landed on
them temporarily. A stag has been known
to hide himself completely in the water,
under a projecting bush, with nothing but
his nose out to breathe, and has been passed
by the hounds. Here, again, the intelligence
of man comes to their aid ; the huntsman
keeps a keener watch than his pack.

As hind-hunting is in winter, the river is
often full, and then there is no doubt which
direction she has taken ; as swimming in the
current takes her and carries her with it,
and she floats down in the centre of the rush-

i8o RED DEER.

ing flood. The huntsman is always anxious
to be on the spot when the hounds run in
upon a hind, because, as she has no horns,
she cannot resist them a moment, and they
pull her down at once. Once when the river
the hind had entered was in full flood —
stave-high is the Exmoor term, meaning level
with the banks — he crossed over swimming
his horse, and was obliged to dismount and
wade in flooded meadows for some distance
beside the stream, encouraging and directing
the pack. Presently the hounds found her,
but, as it happened, on the other side ; he
hastened back to his horse, and saw them
pull her down as he ran. He swam his horse
across again, but when he got to the spot
— though it was but a few minutes — the
deer was not only eaten, but the bones were
picked clean ; so eager are the hounds for the
flesh of the deer.

The hind, like the stag, frequently runs

HIND-HUNTING. 181

at last to the sea, and swims out from the
beach. She swims well and strong, and often
beats the hounds in the water, though it is
then cold. Upon one occasion a hunted hind
took to the sea and swam out so far that she
was but just visible. The huntsman and one
gentleman who had followed close and was
with him, tied their horses in cover and
watched her from the beach. She swam
till their straining eyes lost sight of her;
the hounds, wearied and exhausted, returned
to the beach. While they still stood trying
to catch sight again of the game, a steamer
came past, and at this moment the hunts-
man saw a dark spot on the water which
he imagined must be the hind.

As the steamer approached the dark spot
it began to move, and he was then certain
it was the deer. He shouted and waved
his cap, but the men on the steamer did
not see the deer in the water — they were

1 82 RED DEER.

looking at him on the beach and at the
hounds. At last, however, they understood
the shouting and pointing, and saw the
hind floating in the sea. Then began the
strangest chase — a steamer after a deer. The
men on deck shouted and holloa'd, and the
whistle was blown. The vessel easily over-
took the hind, but when they tried to take
her with a rope, she doubled; the steamer
followed, and again she doubled ; this was
repeated several times, and each time the
hind, though after a long run, avoided them
by doubling.

Presently she turned and swam ashore,
but here the hounds met her on the beach,
and forced her back again. She swam
straight out till the steamer, which had
been brought in nearer the land, began to
chase her, when she returned to the beach
a second time. The hounds drove her to
sea for the third time — this time the steamer

HIND-HUNTING. 183

could not approach near enough to chase
her without grounding, but a hound named
"Trouncer" headed her. This hound swam
faster than the rest of the pack, and showed
greater intelligence. Instead of following
the deer in her windings, he endeavoured
to keep outside her, so as to turn her and
head her for shore. For the third time she
returned to the land, fell, and was taken.

In hind-hunting, the pack often enters
a herd, and divide, some hounds following
one deer and others another, so that there
is much trouble to get them together after
the one chosen, and occasionally two or
three cannot be got back, but have to be
left to themselves. Wire fences are put
round the fir plantations ; hinds and calves
slip through between the wires aside as a
hound does, but sometimes they are not
quick enough, and get haunched while half
through ; the nearest hound snaps at their

1 84 RED DEER.

flanks. A hind when started often has a
calf running beside her. When she finds
that the hounds have really chosen her, she
will knock the calf with her head into a
bush to save it from them. The calf will
lie perfectly still, and the hounds go past
after the mother. The hind places her head
partly under the calf and lifts the little
creature up, throwing it several yards off
the line she is following. The huntsman,
who is generally close up, has often seen
the calf there lying still and motionless, as
he rides by.

It has happened by accident that the
hounds have chased a yearling, and it is
found that a calf will run for a short time
even faster than deer, and go straight away,
for as the calf does not know the country,
he does not turn. In winter hind-hunting
is often very rough work. The boughs in
the covers are wet with mist and soak the

" A hind when started often has a calf running beside her." — Page 184.

HIND-HUNTING. 187

coats of those who ride through, and every
peaty place is full of water on the moors.
Bitter winds sweep furiously across the open
distances, driving the rain before them.
Vapour hangs heavily on the hill-tops and
joins them to the clouds. Rain is often
almost incessant, and even those who are
hardened to it find of the cold. Hind-
hunting is hard work, so that it sometimes
happens not more than half-a-dozen staunch
riders are present. Those who follow the
stag in summer have all the glory; the
labour falls to the hardy hunters of the
winter time.

Hinds have their first calf in the third
year, and afterwards breed yearly, though
sometimes they miss. The calf remains a
long time with the mother, and a calf and
a yearling are often seen running beside her.
Now and then a hind has two calves. The
calf at first is dappled with white spots, and

1 88 RED DEER.

has a dark line down the back ; after a few
months the spots disappear, and the coat
becomes of the same colour throughout.
Some say that it is only the male calf that
is born dappled, but the huntsman is con-
fident that both the male and female are
dappled at first.

All deer come true as to colour, and there
is no variety, such as is seen in park deer.
Until his antlers grow the young male deer
resembles the hind, but his chest and neck
are much darker. If a calf is found in an
enclosure, where the walls are too high for
him, he can be easily ridden down. For a
long time great care was taken not to kill
hinds before they reached full age, but of
recent years they have become so numerous,
and the claims for compensation for damage
so large, that they have had to be thinned.
Times have indeed changed since hinds were
not killed at all, in order that they might

HIND-HUNTING. 189

breed, and turnips and wheat were sown on
purpose for the deer.

If seven or eight deer were killed in a
season it was as much as was expected —
once eleven were killed, and it was thought
that such a number would never be reached
again. But in the season of 1881-82 no
less than one hundred and one deer were
killed ; the slot of the hundredth deer is
mounted in silver, and preserved at the
huntsman's house. He reckons that there
are fifty stags in the district, and some two
hundred and fifty deer of all sizes. But
besides these, there must be many more
out-lying in the broad tract of country they
now roam over. Eighty have been seen in
one herd ; eighty at once crossing a road.
Twenty- six stags have been counted together.
Four hundred years ago, in the language of
the chase, twenty was a little herd, sixty a
middle herd, and eighty a great herd, so that

RED DEER.

the Exmoor herds equal those of ancient
times.

Towards the end of the stag-hunting
season, as the rutting-time approaches, the
stags begin to bellow. From long observa-
tion the harbourer can tell the best stag by
his bellow ; it is not that it is continued
longer than that of others, but the best stag's
has more volume of sound and is shriller.
At this time the stags fight, using their
antlers as skilfully as cunning duellists did
their rapiers. They feint, and jump for-
wards, and watch an opportunity; occasion-
ally one gets a stab from an antler, and
sometimes in their rage they break their
antlers ; not always the heaviest stag but the
quickest wins, as he " winds " the heavier
stag, and wearies him.

The younger stags having shorter horns
are easily conquered ; they are driven away,
and wander great distances in search of a

HIND-HUNTING. 191

hind ; they travel so much and so far as to
soon get thin. The hinds prefer the older
stags, and when two are fighting they will
sometimes approach and butt the one they
dislike behind, and the one they butt is gene-
rally beaten. It is said that stags rarely
fight twice. The conqueror is master of the
wood, and is accompanied by five or six
hinds. The stags in a cover soon know their
master, and yield ; the fighting is when a
strange stag arrives from a distant wood,
perhaps having come ten miles. There is
then a battle between the intruder and the
master of the copse.

At this time a stag's neck becomes much
thicker, and is said to be very tough. Some
say that when a stag has won a battle, if a
man chance to be present he will run at him,
but the huntsman is of opinion that a stag
never attacks a man, not even at rutting-time.
Men are sometimes hurt in approaching a

192 RED DEER.

stag at bay, but he thinks that a stag would
never of his own volition attack any one.
The huntsman has had twenty-seven years'
experience of the deer under every circum-
stance, and his opinion is therefore of value.
A stag defends himself with antler and hoof,
striking and kicking (at bay), he never bites ;
in this respect deer are like sheep. Stags
and hinds live separate, except in the rutting-
time ; herds of stags keep together, and herds
of hinds.

At the season when the stags drop their
horns the stags separate from each other.
Later, when calving, the hinds separate and
are seen alone, or but a few together. The
seasons on Exmoor seem later than those
mentioned by ancient writers on the chase ;
the stags do not get their full heads till
later. As with other animals, so their ways
are local, and these writers doubtless ob-
tained their information in places with a

HIND-HUNTING. 193

warmer climate than the exposed moors, at
a time when the red deer were found in
every county. This must be the reason that
the date of the antlers becoming full on
Exmoor is later than that given by ancient
writers. By Exmoor the lesser celandine
leaves are verdant and in full growth in the
second week of June, yet in other districts
the celandine is remarkable for completely
disappearing before the end of May. Not
only does the buttercup-like flower fade, but
the leaves die away, and it is difficult even
to find the root.

Deer generally feed with their heads to the
wind, but at rest look to leeward. Hunted
venison is considered much better food than
the venison of a deer that has been shot.
But no arrow whistles or bullet sings over
Exmoor now — the sound of the horn alone
is heard, and the deer are even said to re-
cognise the scarlet coat. Is there any time

N

194 RED DEER.

of the year that the horn does not sound,
or that hounds are not afoot after some game
or other in Red Deer Land ? There is hunt-
ing almost the whole year round ; the interval
is so short the staghounds have to be kept in
condition and fit for work from year's end to
year's end.

In spring the otter-hounds are busy in
the rivers and streams. After staghounds are
past the strain and effort of stag- hunting they
are frequently sent to the pack of otter-
hounds. Besides this, there is fox-hunting
and hare-hunting, so that there is scarce a
moment the whole year through that game
is not being chased in the red deer country.
Then there is the black-game shooting on
the moors, the partridges on the corn-lands,
and the pheasants in the woods. Snipes
frequent the peaty places and ponds left by
the removal of the turf on the moors, and wild
ducks and golden plovers are shot. Add to

HIND-HUNTING. 195

this the trout-fishing, and sometimes salmon-
fishing, and there is a complete catalogue of
sport.

Yet with all this chasing, sound of horn
and sound of gun, it is curious to observe
that the birds usually found near homesteads
are much less timid than is the case in other
counties. The chaffinch, for instance, will
perch at the very elbow of the trout-fisher;
the tame pigeons in the village street are
tame indeed, since it is difficult to avoid
driving over them, and there is a manifest
absence of aimless brutality, such brutality
as compels owners of trout streams near large
cities to cover the water over with hurdles
from bank to bank, lest the fish in spawning
time be destroyed by stones. There is a total
absence of ruffianism of this kind.

Something else, too, besides the red deer
has survived, and that is courtesy. Go wher-
ever you will in red deer country you will be

196 RED DEER.

met with politeness, hospitality, and readiness
to oblige. If you are thirsty, you have only to
knock at the nearest door, and, according to
your taste, you can partake of cider or milk ;
and it is ten to one you are asked to enter
and spend half an hour in a pleasant gossip.
Everywhere there is welcome, and the slightest
incident is sufficient introduction ; everywhere
hospitality, and everywhere politeness. On
the road every man you meet, according to
his station, nods his head or touches his hat,
and no one passes another without saluting.
Walk down the village street, and all who
are about, in their gardens, at their doors, on
horseback or afoot, wish you " Good morn-
ing." This is not only observed towards
visitors, but amongst themselves.

Farmers salute farmers ; labourers and em-
ployers acknowledge each other's presence.
The difference is so marked between these
habits of personal courtesy, and those that

HIND-HUNTING. 197

prevail in large towns, that it seems like
another country altogether. Nor is it a
superficial courtesy, but backed by a real
willingness to oblige. Any one with an in-
terest in sport, antiquities, old china, old
furniture, finds not the least difficulty in his
way, but can satisfy his curiosity to the full.

As an instance of the real goodwill that
subsists under the outward politeness may
be mentioned the bees at sheep-shearing
time. The farmers and farmers' sons at
that season visit each farm in succession —
twenty, thirty, or more of them together
sit down in the barn and shear the sheep.
It is a regular bee, on the American pattern,
or rather the adventurers from Westward
Ho! carried the custom with them across
the Atlantic. A farmer who would not assist
his neighbour at such a time and join the
party would be regarded as a churl; but, as
a matter of fact, none ever do refuse.

198 RED DEER.

These sheep-shearing parties soon clear
off the work ; sometimes a farmer has six
hundred to be shorn, sometimes as many as
two thousand. It is one man's work to hand
the cider and refreshment round, and there
is many a song at night. The sheep wander
almost wild among the deer, and are collected
from the haunts of the deer for the shearing.
They have some habits which resemble those
of wild animals ; each party or tribe of sheep,
for instance, has its own special feeding-
ground, which they choose out of the moor
or hillside, and though they wander about
they generally return to this place. When
shorn the lambs, with their horns made more
conspicuous by the removal of the wool, look
like goats. Sheep-shearing time is an annoy-
ance to the trout-fisher, as the water is fouled by
the grease, called the " yok," washed from the
wool, which drives the fish away temporarily.

These bees bring into relief the culture of

HIND-HUNTING. 199

goodwill that survives here. Men are not
so sharply defined in isolation as in locali-
ties nearer civilisation. They do not stand
aloof in villa-seclusion, close by and yet
divided for a lifetime. Here they acknow-
ledge each other's existence, they approach
and lend a helping hand in stress of work.

The common bond of sport has much to
do in preserving this spirit : every one takes
the deepest interest in the deer, and in sport
generally ; it is a topic certain to come up,
and thus a community of feeling causes a
pleasantness of manner. With the red deer
of the old-world time of England survives
the old-world courtesy and hospitality and
the old- world friendliness; it is merry Eng-
land still. Wild as Exmoor is, and far from
the centres of civilisation, there is more cour-
tesy and kindliness in the inhabitants of
Red Deer Land than where the right to lead
the van of modern life is loudly claimed.

RED DEER.

IX.

A MANOR HOUSE IN DEER LAND.

THERE is an old hall with a knight's helmet
carved above the porch. The black oak door
stands ajar, so massive and heavy with iron
rivets, that no gust of air can stir it. A
wind comes from the woods, and entering a
vaulted passage strays aside freely into the
dwelling rooms. For the door in the pass-
age is also ajar, being in like manner of
thick oak, iron studded, and unmoved.

Within, the high windows set deep in the
wall do but just overcome with all their light
the heavy weight of the black oak furniture.
Dark oak shutters, dark oak window-seats,
dark oak beams overhead, a black table in
the midst of the great room, oak cabinets,

A MANOR HOUSE IN DEER LAND. 201

and lesser tables ; all engrained with age.
The bright light of the summer day, glowing
June, stays at the glass panes — looks in but
comes no farther. It is lighted but not full
of light ; there is no brilliance in the atmos-
phere above the great black table.

There are shadows in the corners and
under the cabinets — shadows that have lin-
gered there these centuries past ; the ceiling
is a broad, dark shadow, as if a cloud hung
overhead. A step in the passage sounds
afar and dull, as of some one who had gone
by into the stream of Time. His shadow has
flitted by the half-open iron-studded door ;
his shadow only. The grey stone floor cools
the air of hottest June, as the black furni-
ture cools the light. Without, the wood
near at hand is lit up, brightly green, and
the leaves play in the breeze, insects are
busy there dancing their sun-dance, and
chestnut-bloom gleams white among the

RED DEER.

spray. No insects enter here through the
half-open door — there is no hum : it is
silent, cool, and old.

The very polish of the oak is lustreless,
it is smooth, but does not reflect. Old
shadowy days of rapier and ruff, armour, and
petronel, days when the Spanish Main was
on all men's lips ; of Sir Francis Drake,
whose cannon sound still in the hottest
hours of summer ; old shadowy days, melted
into night three centuries since, have left a
little of their twilight in this hall. There
is a dream in every chair; romance grown
richer with age like the colour of the oak
— forth from the iron-studded door goes the
cavalier and his lady a-hawking.

As the men who built this chamber lived
their time in the forest and on the moors,
thumbing no weary books, so it is right that
to this hour it should be filled with the
spoils and curiosities of the woods. A

A MANOR HOUSE IN DEER LAND. 203

reddish-brown marten-cat, or pine-marten,
trapped by chance thirty years ago, is in
one case, the very last of the pine-martens,
once hunted. This creature, extinct in
Southern England, may often be seen in
museums, brought perhaps from abroad ;
but it is rare to find one that was actually
trapped as this one was by a living person.
There is, too, a polecat, o fitch, with ferret-
like head, and an otter beneath ; a black
harrier, marsh harriers, an osprey, shot at
the trout ponds, heath-poult, a long-eared
owl, and many others. A kite was shot
lately ; his wings outstretched were almost
as wide as a man's arms held open.

On the top of a bird-case is a powder-
flask, and by it pipes in a stand ; on the
great black central table lies a gun — there
are fourteen guns about somewhere, but
these are not enough for such a sportsman,
and negotiations are proceeding for the pur-

204 RED DEER.

chase of another. When the fifteenth has
been purchased there will soon be talk of
another, for guns are things you never get
tired of buying and trying. Under the table
on the stone floor is one of Sir Francis
Drake's magic cannon-balls. The tale is
well known how he was fighting the Span-
iards, and his faithless lady-love at home
started for church to wed a rival, but at the
altar a mighty cannon ball, shot from over
the ocean, passed between the bride and
bridegroom. The admiral and magician thus
warned them of his displeasure. Something
of its charmed character adheres to the ball
still ; and if carried away, no matter to what
distance, it invariably rolls back home of its
own accord, and is found in its accustomed
place. Few can lift, or carry, the heavy
black globe, which has the outward appear-
ance of a meteorite.

Silvery-grey tapestry covers the walls of

A MANOR HOUSE IN DEER LAND. 205

other chambers more sunny and habitable
than this ; some pale and ancient, and valu-
able, some bright in colour, where Grecian
warriors charge, less valuable and more
showy. Still, even in these rooms, where
the carpets and the furniture are of a more
comfortable era than that which endured
stone floors, even here in corners are frag-
ments of the past — porcelain, and old pot-
tery, and carved tokens of a century since.
But the sun of June shines in and does not
linger at the pane ; the twitter of birds and
the hum of insects, the laughter and shouts
of children come through the open window
with the rustle of green leaves. Bright,
happy life of sunny hours dwells round
about amid roses and carnations.

Another iron-studded door opens on the
great kitchen, where the ancient settles are
still in use. Brands — logs four or five feet
long — can be thrown on the wide hearth.

206 RED DEER.

Upon one side of the hearth is a long ver-
tical steel handle, brightly polished, much
like the valve-handle of an engine. By this
handle the smoke-jack is regulated ; at a
touch a small endless chain depending from
the chimney causes the horizontal spit to
slowly revolve. Looking up the chimney
the smoke-jack fills the cavity, like a hori-
zontal windmill perpetually revolving, driven
by the heated air ascending. In how few,
even of the most ancient houses, are smoke-
jacks still at work. No meat is so good
and richly flavoured as that cooked before a
wood fire.

Coming out at the arched porch under the
carved helmet and the inscription (not only
written in a dead language, but the very
letters ground away by Time), a May-fly
has wandered into the hollow as far as the
sunshine slants. His wings — something the
colour of thin old glass, weather-beaten to a

A MANOR HOUSE IN DEER LAND. 207

faint yellow-green — are blurred with darker
colour like egg marks. Rising up and down
in the sunshine, he has wandered hither from
the trout-stream. The old tower casts a
longer shadow now, as the heat of the June
day declines. Many an old engraving is up
there, it is said, inaccessible because the
place is full of fleeces. The wealth of the
land here is in wool, and wool has been so
low in price of recent years that fleeces are
stored and kept season after season in hope
of a rise.

The way up to the woods is beside the
trout-stream ; it is indeed but a streamlet,
easy to stride across, yet it is full of trout.
Running with a quick tinkle over red stones,
the shallow water does not look as if it would
float a fish, but they work round the stones
and under hollows of the banks. The lads
have not forgotten how to poach them ; such
knowledge is handed down by tradition, and

2o8 RED DEER.

will never be lost while a stream flows ; it
will be familiar when the school-books are
dust and mildew.

They tickle the fish as it lies under a stone,
slightly rubbing it underneath to keep it still,
and then quickly run a sharpened kitchen
fork through the tail, and so secure the slip-
pery trout. They tie a treble hook, like a
grapnel, to a stout piece of twine, and draw
it across the water till under the fish, when,
giving a sudden snatch, one of the hooks
is sure to catch it at the side. Trout can
also be wired with a running loop of wire.
Groping for trout (or tickling), still practised
in the rivers when they are low so that the
fish can be got at, is tracing it to the stone
it lies under, then rubbing it gently beneath,
which causes the fish to gradually move back-
wards into the hand till the fingers suddenly
close in the gills, where alone a firm hold
can be obtained.

A MANOR HOUSE IN DEER LAND. 209

The rivers of Somerset have stony bottoms,
so that the eels can be seen moving about
like black snakes. They glide over the stones
at the bottom, exactly as a snake glides over
the surface of the ground, and when still
remain in a sinuous form. Trout swim over
and past them. All their motions can be
watched, while in the brooks and streams
of other counties, where the bottom is of mud
or dark sandy loam, they are rarely seen.
There they seem to move through the mud,
or its dark colour conceals them. Getting
into the water, men move the stones till
they find an eel, and then thrust a fork
through it, the only way to hold it.

Some distance up the streamlet in a coombe,
wooded each side to a great height, are
three trout ponds. Ferns grow green and
thick where the water falls over the hatch,
and by the shore flourishes the tall reed-mace
(so rarely distinguished from the lesser bul-

RED DEER.

rush). A ripple here, a circle yonder, a splash
across in the corner, show where trout have
risen to flies. The osprey was shot at these
ponds, and once now and then the "spoor"
of an otter is found on the shore. Leaving
the water, the path goes up the steep coombe
under oaks, far up to the green pasture at the
summit. Across on another slope, against
which the declining sun shines brightly, there
are two or three white spots — quite brilliantly
white. One moves presently, and it is seen
that they are white wild rabbits. Their
brown friends are scarcely visible except when
moving. Red deer used to lie in the cover
yonder till they were chased, since which
none have returned to the spot. Beside the
oak wood in the pasture on the summit it
is pleasant walking now in the shade after
the heat of the day.

It is along the side of a cover like this
that the poachers set their larger rabbit-nets

A MANOR HOUSE IN DEER LAND. 211

at night. There is one seized from poachers
down at the old hall. The net is about a
hundred yards long and a yard or so wide,
made of bluish-green hemp, three threads to
the strand, and the mesh about two inches
square — just large enough for a rabbit to
get his head through ; a very young rabbit
could go right through the mesh. There is
an iron pin at each end to thrust in the
ground. The poacher having pushed the
iron pin in, steps a pace or two and runs
a stick in the ground, twists the string at
the upper part of the net round the top of
the stick, leaving the net suspended, and
repeats this every few steps till he comes to
the iron pin at the other end of the net.
In this way he can set the net almost as
quickly as he walks.

Three are required to work it properly,
and the net is placed along the head of a
cover between nine and ten at night while

RED DEER.

the rabbits are out feeding in the pasture,
so as to cut off their return to their burrows.
Either one of the poachers or a lurcher next
go round some distance and drive every-
thing towards it, while the other poachers
stand behind the net to take out the rabbits
as they come. In a moment or two they
rush from all quarters helter-skelter in the
darkness, and bound into the net. The
rabbit's head enters the mesh, and he rolls
over, causing it to bag round him. The
poachers endeavour to get them out as fast
as they come to prevent their escape, and
to make ready for fresh captives. They
wring the rabbits' necks, killing them in-
stantly. Sometimes the rabbits come in
such numbers and all together in a crowd, so
that they cannot get them out fast enough,
and a few manage to escape. Once, however,
the rabbit's head is well through the mesh, he
is generally safe for a quarter of an hour.

A MANOR HOUSE IN DEER LAND. 213

Large catches are often made like this.
Sometimes as many as sixty or eighty rabbits
may be seen out feeding in the evening by
the head of a cover — that is, where the
wood joins the meadows. Besides rabbits a
hare now and then runs in, and a fox is
occasionally caught. Everything out in the
fields, on being alarmed, scampers back to
the wood, and the large net, invisible in
the darkness, intercepts the retreat. Bluish-
green meshes are scarcely noticeable even
in daylight when laid in ferns, on bushes,
or by tall grass. This net down at the hall
cost the poachers two or three pounds, and
was taken from them the very first night
they used it. It is heavy and forms a heap
rolled up — enough to fill a bushel basket.
The meshes are very strong and will hold
anything. A very favourite time to set these
nets, and indeed for all kinds of poaching,
as with wires, is after rain, when rabbits,

214 RED DEER.

and hares too, feed voraciously. After rain
a hare will run at night twice as much as
other nights ; these evenings are the best
for shooting rabbits out feeding.

The poacher who goes out to net hares
has a net about twelve feet long, similar in
shape, and takes with him a lurcher. He
has previously found where hares feed at
night by their tracks to and fro and the
marks of their pads on the wet ground, as
the sand in gateways. Hares usually go
through gateways, so that he knows which
way they will come. He sets the net across
the gateway inside the field, stands aside
and sends the dog to drive the hare into
it. The dog is a cross between a sheep-dog
and a collie, very fast, and runs mute ; he
does not give tongue on finding the scent ;
if he did the poacher would strangle him
as useless, since barking would announce
too plainly what was going- forward.

A MANOR HOUSE IN DEER LAND. 215

The lurcher is very intelligent, and quite
understands what he is wanted to do. On
finding the hare he gives chase ; often the
hare goes straight for the net, but may of
course follow another direction, when it is
the lurcher's work to turn her, and not let
her leave the field except by that one exit.
To do this the lurcher must be swift, else
the hare can distance him. If he succeeds
and drives her that way, the instant she
is in the net the poacher falls on it and
secures her. Hares struggle hard, and if
he stayed to catch hold with his hands she
might be gone, but by falling bodily on the
net he is certain of getting her, and pre-
vents her too from screaming, as hares will in
the most heartrending manner. By moving
on from gateway to gateway, where he has
previously ascertained hares are usually out
at night, the poacher may catch four or five
or more in a little while.

216 RED DEER.

But it sometimes happens that a hare
escapes from the net, not getting sufficiently
entangled, and she remembers it ever after-
wards, and tries hard the next time for her
life. The marks of the struggle are plainly
visible on the wet ground next morning —
the marks of her pads as she raced round
and round the field, refusing to be driven
by the lurcher through the gateway, where
she now suspects danger. Round and round
she flies, endeavouring to gain sufficiently
on the dog to be able to leap at some
favourable place in the hedge, and so to
get through and away. Sometimes she can-
not do it; the lurcher overtakes her, and
either seizes her, or forces her to the net ;
sometimes she increases her distance suffi-
ciently, leaps at the hedge, is through and
safe. It is the hedge and wall that trouble
her so ; she cannot put forth her swiftest
pace and go right away; she must course

•' Leaps at the hedge, is through and safe." — Page 216,

A MANOR HOUSE IN DEER LAND. 219

in a circle. This is another reason why
the poacher falls on the hare the instant
she strikes the net, because if she does
escape she will always remember and be so
difficult to take afterwards. Several poachers
often go out like this in the evening, one
one way and another another, and so scour
the fields.

A young fellow once, who wanted some
money and had heard of the hauls made
by a gang of poachers, joined them, and
his first essay on the following night was
with a hare net. The net being set for
him in a gateway, he was instructed to in-
stantly fall on anything that entered it. He
took his stand; the poachers went on to
different gateways and gaps, set their own
nets, and finally despatched their dogs. The
young poacher watched his net as closely
as he could in the darkness, ready to obey
his orders. All at once something struck

RED DEER,

the net ; he fell headlong on it and got it
under him right enough, but the next in-
stant he received a terrible bite. He shouted
and yelled " Murder ! " at the top of his
voice, but held on groaning to the net and
the creature in it, though in an agony of
pain.

No one came to his assistance, for at
the sound of his yell the poachers imagined
the keepers were collaring him, and snatch-
ing up their nets ran off at full speed.
Shouting and yelling, he struggled and held
the creature down till he had kicked it to
death, when he found it was a badger. Out
feeding, the badger had been alarmed by
the dog, and made for the gateway ; so
soon as he was touched, he began to bite
as only a badger can. The young fellow
was terribly hurt, both his arms and legs
having suffered, and had to keep his bed
for some time. Indignant at the faithless

A MANOR HOUSE IN DEER LAND. 221

conduct of his associates, who had so meanly
abandoned him, he renounced poaching. Be-
sides watching the net the poacher watches
to see if a keeper approaches. The keeper
knows as well as the poacher where hares
run, and suspects that certain gateways may
be netted. If he sees the keeper coming he
snatches up his net and bolts, and this he
is sometimes obliged to do at the very
moment the hare has entered the meshes,
so that in tearing up the net he turns her
out, unexpectedly free.

The netting of partridges depends on a
habit these birds have of remaining still on
the ground at night until forced to move.
Roosting on the ground, they will not rise
till compelled ; and the same thing may be
observed of larks, who lie quiet at night till
nearly stepped on. A partridge-net is held
by a man at each end and dragged along the
ground. It is weighted to keep one side

RED DEER.

of it heavy and close to the earth, and in
action somewhat resembles a trawl. The
poachers know where birds are roosting, and
drag the net over them. They will not
move till then, when they rise, and the in-
stant the poachers hear anything in the net
they drop it, and find the birds beneath it.
Poaching varies in localities ; where hares
abound it is hare-poaching, or rabbits — as
the case may be.

The most desperate poachers are those
who enter the woods in the winter for
pheasants. They shoot pheasants, and
sometimes in the deep-wooded coombes,
where the sound rolls and echoes for several
seconds from the rocks, it is difficult to
tell where the gun was fired. It might
have been at one end of the valley or at
the other. The gangs, however, who shoot
pheasants openly declare their indifference
as to whether they are detected or not.

A MANOR HOUSE IN DEER LAND. 223

They simply let it be known that they do
not intend to be taken ; they have guns
and will use them, and if the keepers attack
them it is at the risk of their lives. The
question arises whether a too severe punish-
ment for game-theft may not be respon-
sible for this, and whether it does not defeat
its object, since, if a poacher is aware that
a heavy term of imprisonment awaits him,
he will rather fire than be captured. At
all events, such is the condition of things
in some districts, and the keepers, for this
reason, rarely interfere with such a gang.
Such severe terms of imprisonment are cruel
to keepers, whose lives are thereby im-
perilled.

The path has now led up by the oak
woods to a great height, and the setting
sun gleams over the hills of Red Deer
Land. It is a land full of old memories.
It is strange that Sir Francis Drake, like

224 RED DEER.

Virgil, should have acquired the fame of a
magician. Sometimes in the hottest noon-
tide of summer, when the sky is clear, the
wood still, and the vapour of heat lying
about the hillsides, there comes from un-
known distances a roll and vibration like
heavy thunder, fined to a tremble of the air.
It is an inexplicable sound. There are no
visible thunder-clouds, no forts within aud-
ible distance. Perhaps it is the implacable
Drake discharging his enchanted cannon
in the azure air against the enemies of
England.

225

GAME NOTES AND FOLK-LORE.

PHEASANT-POACHERS go to the centre of a
copse, in which they know there are plenty
of birds, and make pheasant-creeps. The
pheasant is a bird which runs a great deal,
and prefers to creep through bushes rather
than to fly over. They make tracks through
the undergrowth in the copse, and it is across
these favourite paths that the poachers form
artificial creeps. Briars are pulled down and
bent over, bushes broken, or cut half through,
so that they will bend, boughs dragged down,
and a hedge constructed in the middle of the
cover.

Through this hedge they leave holes, or
" creeps," for the pheasants to run through,

226 RED DEER.

and in these holes place wires with loops
to draw up, and hold the pheasant. As the
pheasant passes under the creep he puts his
neck in the noose, and draws it so that he
is caught. The wires are muzzled, so that
the bird shall not be strangled. If the loop
was left to draw up tightly without a check,
the pheasant, pulling against the noose, would
hang himself, and be soon dead. But as a
pheasant sells best alive the poachers do
not want this, and so arrange the loop that
it shall only draw up to a certain point,
sufficient to hold the bird fast, but not to
injure it.

They next go round to one end of the
copse — the wired " creeps " being in the
centre — and proceed to drive the pheasants
towards the wires by tapping two pieces of
stick together, or a couple of stones. At
this sound the pheasants begin to run away
from it along their accustomed paths. Too

GAME NOTES AND FOLK-LORE. 227

much noise would cause them to rise, but
this peculiar tap, tapping merely makes
them run. In pheasant- shooting, when the
keepers wish the pheasants to avoid certain
exits from the covers, and to direct them
towards points where sportsmen are placed,
they set men with two sticks to knock to-
gether in the same way, and at this noise
the birds turn back, and run in the direction
required.

Driven before the poacher's tap, tap, the
pheasants presently come to the artificial
hedge, and creeping without hesitation
through the holes left for them, are noosed
by the wires. When the poachers come up
they put the captured birds alive in a bag,
and then go to the other end of the cover
and repeat the process, and so catch all in
the copse ; first, the birds are driven into
the wires from one end of the copse and
then from the other. Poachers also look

228 RED DEER.

out for the creeps which the pheasants have
made for themselves over mounds. They
wander a good deal from cover, and especi-
ally towards barley and barley-stubble, called
barley-harrish in Red Deer Land. To get to
the corn they have to pass through hedges, and
their tracks are easily found on the mounds.
Wires are set in these creeps, and the phea-
sants are caught as they go out to feed.

Sometimes in winter wires for pheasants
are set round corn-ricks, to which the birds
resort. All poaching is founded on the
habits of wild creatures. Partridges in
winter also resort to corn-ricks, and are
occasionally shot there by poachers. Both
pheasants and partridges are fond of ants'
eggs. In covers the large wood-ants, which
are about half an inch long, make immense
nests of leaves and fibres, quite mounds, and
to these the young pheasants go and take
as many eggs as they can. The ants often

GAME NOTES AND FOLK-LORE. 229

bite them severely; the pheasant jumps as
the ant bites. Where partridges are bred
in great numbers the keepers seek out the
nests of the meadow-ant, go round with a
cart, and dig up the nests, earth and all,
and throw them into the cart, and so carry
them home for the young birds to feed on.

The woods of Red Deer Land are full of
birds of prey inimical to game ; the most
destructive are the magpies, for they must
be considered birds of prey so far as game
is concerned. They are insatiably fond of
eggs, and also kill the young birds. They
are numerous, as many as twenty or thirty
being often seen in a flock, and there are
sometimes even larger flocks than this. On
the moors sheep run almost untended ; if a
sheep gets on his back in a hollow sometimes
he cannot get up, and while in this helpless
position a couple of magpies will peck out
his eyes. They are fond of the eye, and will

230 RED DEER.

take it if they can ; yet the same magpies
ride on the sheep's back as he walks, and
remove pests from the wool.

The way to kill these birds is to hang
up a dead lamb, poisoned, in a tree ; they
tear the flesh, and are destroyed by the poison
it has absorbed. There are always some
round the kennels when the hounds have
flesh-food ; it is generally hung in a tree,
and numbers of magpies come to it. If a
shepherd sees a sheep lying on its back he
hastens, of course, at once to help it to roll
over and regain its feet, for if not able to
get up in time the sheep would die. Collies
are the favourite sheep-dogs on the moors,
and they are very intelligent. A collie was
seen, when the shepherd was not about, to
run of his own accord to a sheep on its back,
and first bark at it to force the animal to
fresh exertions. But when the dog found
that the sheep, try as much as it would,

GAME NOTES AND FOLK-LORE. 231

could not get up, he pushed against it on
one side with all his might with his paws,
and then with his shoulder, and this pressure
was just enough to enable the sheep to roll
on to its side, and so to rise.

An eagle seen on the moors could not be
approached, but a dead lamb was put under
a wall, and when the eagle came down to
the carcase the gunner crept up the other
side of the wall, and so shot the bird.
Hooded crows are also found, and take the
eggs of game. Owls are very numerous in
the covers. Wood-owls, or brown-owls, as
they are indifferently called, are considered
by the keepers destructive to game, especi-
ally to young rabbits. Rabbit's "flex" is
always found in a wood-owl's nest — " flex "
is the local equivalent of fleece, or fur —
and the bodies of young rabbits have been
found in the nest, which is in a hollow
tree. They will take a leveret.

232 RED DEER.

A trap for owls is set on a pole ; the pole
is firmly planted in the ground, and has
stout nails driven in each side, so that it is
easy to climb up, and fix the trap. There is
no bait ; the owl comes floating along on
his rounds as it grows dusk, and seeing a
convenient post alights on it, and is im-
mediately caught. This habit of perching
on any conspicuous pole is most fatal to
these birds, and however many may perish,
the remainder never learn the danger. One
such pole and trap was set in a fir-planta-
tion ; the trees were young, and the pole
was just tall enough to reach above the
highest boughs, and so to attract the atten-
tion of the birds. Upon that single pole
no less than two hundred owls were taken,
chiefly brown owls, but many white owls,
and some few of the horned or long-eared
species.

To draw out an owl from his nest in a

GAME NOTES AND FOLK-LORE. 233

hollow tree is not a pleasant task, even
with a glove on ; he will often manage to
get his sharp claws into the wrist. The
way is to seize his head and crush it, kill-
ing him instantly, for an owl's head is soft,
and can be crushed easily. The white owls
are not so injurious. Sparrow-hawks and
kestrels are plentiful, and are constantly
trapped. The keepers insist that the kestrel
will occasionally take game, and say that
they have found wings of partridges in
kestrels' nests, though they allow that the
kestrel is not nearly so harmful as the
sparrow-hawk. Buzzards are sometimes shot,
and are now worth something to sell to
collectors.

The vast moors of lied Deer Land; the
great oak covers which would be called
forests in any other country, and many of
which are not used for game preservation,
so that hawks breed as they list ; the ranges

234 RED DEER.

of hills, and the inaccessible rocks by the
sea, furnish an endless supply of birds of
prey. Foxes, too, are numerous ; the dog-
fox barks at night in January, and may
then be heard in the woods ; the vixen
occasionally makes an extraordinary noise
like the screech of a frightened child.
There are many badgers, and their skins are
often to be seen in houses on the chairs
and sofas. The stone floor of a keeper's
house is carpeted with them ; the skin of
the head usually has grey stripes or bands.
One of these badger's skins on the floor
has golden stripes in the place of the grey
marks.

On the distant hills the only break to the
slow curve of their outline is caused by an
occasional tumulus. There are no copses on
the summits of the ranges, only tumuli here
and there, singly or in groups. The con-
tents are not so well known as elsewhere,

'The dog-fox barks at night."— Page 234.

GAME NOTES AND FOLK-LORE. 237

for there is a prevalent dislike to opening
a barrow. The feeling is very strong, and
those who own property do not care to go
against it. It is believed that certain mis-
fortune will fall on the household of any one
digging into a tumulus, and that generally
a death follows the intrusion upon the
ancient tomb. Possibly this idea may be
an unconscious memory of prehistoric times,
when sacrifices to ancestors and heroes were
made in the precincts of tumuli. They
were considered sacred then, and the feel-
ing seems to have lingered on down to the
present day. Places where battles have oc-
curred, and where human bones are known
to lie, must not be disturbed for the same
reason.

It happened that some misfortune fell
upon a household without any apparent
cause; but one day there was found in the
house an ancient sword with a gold hilt.

238 RED DEER.

A younger member of the family, free from
the superstition of the elders, then confessed
that he had been digging over and exploring
a battle site, or ancient burial-place, in the
district, and had discovered the sword, and
hidden it in the house for fear of displeasure.
Here at once was the cause of the trouble
that had visited them.

The folk do not like banks ; they think
banks are unlucky, and say that the best
way is to have a stocking. Some money is
placed in a stocking, then the owner has
to observe certain ceremonies, and to select
a secret spot, and there bury it. To this
secret store he adds from time to time till
the stocking can hold no more, and in
this way lays the foundation of prosperity.
Many declare that they never thrived till
they resorted to this plan of having a magic
stocking.

The hills are all "knaps," or "knowls;"

GAME NOTES AND FOLK-LORE. 239

there is one knowl famous for the cure of
hooping cough. The child suffering must
be taken up on the knowl, or hill, and laid
down in a place where sheep have been
folded. The corresponding terms to knap
and knowl for rising-ground are coombe and
cleeve for hollows. Another kind of hollow
in the hills is called a pan. They are
greatly afraid of being " overlooked," that,
is, of the evil eye. To be overlooked is to
receive a glance from some one who pos-
sesses the power of the evil eye, and is the
cause of all kinds of mischief. A person
overlooked succeeds in nothing, but is met
with constant disappointment ; whatever he
or she does fails ; they cannot get on, and
are sometimes overtaken with worse mis-
fortunes.

The wise woman of the hamlet is regarded
with reverence and fear, and resorted to in
difficulty. Much wood is burned in these

240 RED DEER.

places, and for burning wood a hearth is
needed, and a hearth necessitates a wide
chimney. When the wise woman receives
a visit, and agrees to remove the spell, or
cast a fresh one, she presently stands in the
chimney and mutters her charms to the stars,
which at night are visible through it. The
hamlet girls, such as servants, continually
go to the wise woman ; if they lose their
money for their pains they are afraid to tell
or inform lest the charm should fall on them.
In some places it is a witch-doctor instead
of a wise woman, and he is called in if any-
thing is the matter with the cattle.

In one village the inhabitants somehow
got an idea that a death, or illness, or ac-
cident was sure to happen in the place if
the clergyman chanced to finish his afternoon
sermon at four o'clock. If he concluded at
four a misfortune was certain to happen in
the village during the next week. This

GAME NOTES AND FOLK-LORE. 241

extraordinary superstition was confirmed by
several coincidences, which they observed ;
some illness or accident did occur once or
twice, and the belief became firmly fixed.
By-and-by the clergyman heard of this, and
afterwards took care that the sermon should
finish either some few minutes before or
after four. As he preached he listened for
the warning note of the church clock just
before four and timed himself accordingly.

Belief in the wise woman, in omens, and
ancient traditionary superstitions, like that
about tumuli, is by no means confined to
the labouring classes, but shared in by many
who are well-to-do and, from their posi-
tion, would be imagined superior to such
influences. Over Red Deer Land modern
civilisation has passed like a breath of wind,
stirring the leaves of the trees but leaving
them as they were. Just as material forces
have been baffled in the attempt to cultivate

242 RED DEER.

the wilderness of Exmoor, so the mental
forces of the present era have only super-
ficially touched the people. They read the
newspaper, and talk the current topics of
the day, but their views and ideas remain un-
changed. Among the labouring class some
considerable polish of language now exists.
They converse in good terms, especially the
young people, and listening to them, as they
reply to your questions, you say to yourself,
"This cannot be Zummerzet."

Not one word of superstition, or ancient
tradition, or curious folk-lore, can a stranger
extract. The past seems dead, and they are
not to be distinguished from the people of
other districts close to the populous centres
of industry. But the fact is that this silence
is not change : it is a reticence purposely
adhered to. By mutual consent they stead-
fastly refrain from speaking in their own
tongue and of their own views to strangers

GAME NOTES AND FOLK-LORE. 243

or others not of the country-side. They
speak to strangers in the voice of the nine-
teenth century, the voice of newspaper, book,
and current ideas. They reserve for them-
selves their own ancient tongue and ancient
ideas, their traditions, and belief in the
occult. Perhaps this very reservation tends
to keep up the past among them. There is
thus a double life — the superficial and the
real. The labourer has disused the "z"
openly, but still remains and will remain
distinct from the inhabitants of other coun-
ties. It is a distinction of race that cannot
be removed by the printing press. The men
of Red Deer Land are ethnographically
separate from those to the east of them,
and they cannot be taught out of their
racial peculiarities.

A tendency to slur their words is still
apparent ; they run the consonants of several
words together, and an unaccustomed ear

244 RED DEER.

cannot divide the sounds. The letter "r"
is rolled and doubled ; thus, for work they
say "wurruk," "Burrle" for Barle ; beach,
again, is spoken "bache," and wheat is
" wait ; " bushes are " booshes ; " Dulverton
is " Dilverton." Many old words remain in
circulation or are dropped unconsciously,
and if noticed are apologised for. Heather
is "yeth," whorts are "hurts," among the
labouring people, and to go gathering whortle-
berries is to go " a-hurting." They say
" time agone " for some time since ; " right
away over" to express distance, an appro-
priate phrase in a hilly country.

But so complete is the superficial change
that even "plough" has been abandoned,
and is now used in the same sense as else-
where. By plough was originally meant not
the iron instrument which turns the furrow,
but the team that draws it; they said "Take
a plough and fetch a waggon." The imple-

GAME NOTES AND FOLK-LORE. 245

ment was called a " sull," or "zull" — the
plough drew the sull. The fact of an
agricultural population abandoning an agri-
cultural term like this shows how on the
surface things are changed. Yet on occasion
they can speak the ancient tongue.

In wet weather a man was asked if a lane
was passable — could any one drive through
it ? His reply was dubious ; he said, " The
nits be up to the nuts of a leary putt, an'
it would take a good plough to draaw'n
through." Translated it runs: "The ruts
are up to the nuts, or axle, of an empty
cart, and it would take a good team to
draw it through " A lane in which the ruts
were so deep that an empty and, therefore,
a light cart sank to the axle, was not
altogether passable.

Since the schoolmaster has been abroad
in Somerset it is observed that the "h"
has been dropped altogether. Previous to

246 RED DEER.

the spread of education the people were re-
markable for aspirating the " h " properly ;
since they have been to school they have
lost that letter. Ancient modes of expres-
sion, provincial words, and pronunciation
are said to linger most among certain of
the older farmers, too independent of purse
and mind to change their speech to please
the present generation. Curious incidents
sometimes happen in outlying places.

There is a church among the heather and
woods, and a farmhouse by it ; the hamlet
is so small that it is not easy to find. One
Sunday morning the clergyman was observed
to hesitate in giving out the Psalms, and by-
and-by an altercation arose between him and
the clerk, one maintaining that it was the
2 ist and the other that it was the 22nd of
the month. At last a sturdy farmer got up
and declared he would fetch the almanac
and see. Out he went, and returned in a

GAME NOTES AND FOLK-LORE. 247

few minutes chuckling. "D'd if ee beant
both wrong; it's the 23rd," said he. The
service having now lost its continuity, he
suggested, with practical common sense,

"This be rough riding." — Page 248.

" that they shouldn't do no good there now ;
they had better come on in and have some
cider ; " and the tale is that they went.

When the Prince of Wales came down
to Exmoor to see a stag chased it chanced

248 RED DEER.

as the hunt rode over the moors they came
to a gateway where the going was exceed-
ingly bad, and a farmer who was passing
through at the same time called out to
the Heir- Apparent, "This be rough riding,
Mr. Prince!"

THE END.

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